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85–795 PDF 2003

S. HRG. 108–13

WMD DEVELOPMENTS ON THE KOREAN

PENINSULA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

UNITED STATES SENATE

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

FEBRUARY 4, 2003

Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate

COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS

RICHARD G. LUGAR, Indiana, Chairman

CHUCK HAGEL, Nebraska

LINCOLN CHAFEE, Rhode Island

GEORGE ALLEN, Virginia

SAM BROWNBACK, Kansas

MICHAEL B. ENZI, Wyoming

GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio

LAMAR ALEXANDER, Tennessee

NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota

JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR., Delaware

PAUL S. SARBANES, Maryland

CHRISTOPHER J. DODD, Connecticut

JOHN F. KERRY, Massachusetts

RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin

BARBARA BOXER, California

BILL NELSON, Florida

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, West Virginia

JON S. CORZINE, New Jersey

KENNETH A. MYERS, JR., Staff Director

ANTONY J. BLINKEN, Democratic Staff Director

(II)

CONTENTS

Page

Armitage, Hon. Richard L., Deputy Secretary of State; accompanied by Hon.

James A. Kelly, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific

Affairs, Department of State, Washington, DC ................................................. 4

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 6

Biden, Hon. Joseph R., Jr., U.S. Senator from Delaware, prepared statement . 21

Bosworth, Hon. Stephen W., dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, former U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea,

executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, Medford, MA ................................................................................................ 53

Carter, Hon. Ashton B., former Assistant Secretary of Defense, co-director,

Preventive Defense Project, John F. Kennedy School of Government, professor of Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge,

MA ......................................................................................................................... 39

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 44

Feingold, Hon. Russell D., U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, prepared statement .. 12

Gregg, Hon. Donald P., president and chairman of the Korea Society, former

U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, former Security Advisor to

Vice President George Bush, New York, NY ..................................................... 48

Prepared statement .......................................................................................... 51

Lugar, Hon. Richard G., U.S. Senator from Indiana, opening statement ........... 3

(III)

(1)

WMD DEVELOPMENTS ON THE KOREAN

PENINSULA

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2003

U.S. SENATE, COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, Washington, DC.

The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m. in room SH– 216, Hart Senate Office Building, Hon. Richard G. Lugar (chairman of the committee), presiding.

Present: Senators Lugar, Hagel, Chafee, Allen, Alexander,

Sununu, Biden, Sarbanes, Dodd, Feingold, Boxer, Rockefeller, and

Corzine.

The CHAIRMAN. This meeting of the Senate Foreign Relations

Committee is called to order. We are privileged to have today two

distinguished panels, and we will ask that the members respect the

fact that Secretary Armitage must leave by 11:15. So at the conclusion of his statement, we will gauge the number of members who

have appeared and try to make a calculation, in terms of questioning time, so that each member will have an opportunity and,

at the same time, the Secretary can meet his important commitments. Likewise, it is important that we proceed in a way in which

we have ample time for our distinguished second panel, because

members will want to question them.

Senator Biden is detained for the moment. And when he arrives,

the Chair will recognize him for his opening statement. I will make

an opening statement at this point and then recognize Secretary

Armitage.

This is the first of a number of hearings pertaining to the Korean

Peninsula. In future hearings, we will review food assistance,

human rights concerns, economic reforms, peninsula reunification,

and other pertinent issues. Today’s hearing will review weapons of

mass destruction [WMD] on the Korean Peninsula.

In recent weeks, following admissions of North Korean officials

of their uranium-enrichment program, in violation of the Agreed

Framework of 1994 and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the

level of public exchange between North Korea and the United

States has reached a new intensity.

Unfortunately, we have been at this juncture before. And in

1994, North Korea was removing spent fuel, which could be reprocessed for use in nuclear weapons. Negotiation of the Agreed Framework brought a halt to immediate prospects for war.

In 1998, North Korea launched a ballistic missile over Japan.

And while the United States had become distracted by other international issues, North Korea remained focused on its nuclear proVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:38 May 07, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 85795 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
2

gram. It appears that maintenance of the Agreed Framework became policy in itself, its fragility demonstrated by the 1998 missile

launch by North Korea.

Last year, I outlined some of my thoughts regarding the vulnerability of the United States to the use of weapons of mass destruction, whether from terrorist organizations or from rogue nations. I

stand by my premise that every nation—every nation—which has

weapons and materials of mass destruction, must account for what

it has, spend its own money or obtain international technical and

financial resources to safely secure what it has, and pledge that no

other nation, cell or cause will be allowed access or use. A satisfactory level of accountability, transparency, and safety must be established in every nation with a weapon of mass destruction program.

When nations resist accountability, or when they make their territory available to terrorists who are seeking weapons of mass destruction, our nation must be prepared to use force as well as all

diplomatic and economic tools at our disposal.

This doctrine, which I espouse, also applies to North Korea.

While the United States is and should be prepared to use force related to North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, we must guarantee to the American public and to Americans serving in Korea,

that all diplomatic options are being pursued. The stakes are high.

We must not discount the horrific consequences to American, Korean, and perhaps Japanese lives resulting from a misunderstanding or a miscalculation on the part of either side.

I would like to recall a partial text of a joint statement that Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, and I issued in 1994 as part of a Summary of Findings and Recommendations regarding the crisis at

that time. And our quote, ‘‘Our policymaking and coordination with

our allies, the timing of our statements and our actions, our responses to developments on the Korean Peninsula, and our communication with our diplomatic and military leaders in the field must

all be sharpened and strengthened in the days and weeks ahead.

Korean developments must be the subject of clear, frequent focus

by top Clinton Administration officials, including the President.

The United States should designate a single senior official with access to the President, the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of

Defense to help develop and coordinate United States policy and

action on Korea. We must speak with one voice on this sensitive

matter,’’ end of quote.

This recommendation, in my judgment, still applies today. While

Americans have been deeply concerned about the war with—potential war with Iraq, many have also considered the Korean crisis a

more serious situation. In fact, both are very serious, both are very

dangerous, and both need our full attention.

It is apparent that North Korea has taken several provocative actions recently, including steps which could lead to production of nuclear weapons in the next few months. I believe that United States

officials should talk to North Korean officials about ending North

Korean nuclear weapons programs with provisions of comprehensive international inspections to ensure a successful clean-up procedure.

North Korea may mention in these talks its desire for nonaggression guarantees, potential commercial relations with other counVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:38 May 07, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 85795 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
3

tries, and urgent humanitarian food and fuel contributions through

international agencies to assist the North Korean people. We

should be prepared to talk to North Korea about all of this.

I ask the administration to address promptly not only the importance of international multiparty diplomacy with North Korea, but

the importance of immediate United States leadership, including

direct talks between the United States and North Korea.

[The opening statement of Senator Lugar follows:]

OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR RICHARD G. LUGAR

This is the first of a number of hearings pertaining to the Korean Peninsula. In

future hearings we will review food assistance, human rights concerns, economic reforms, peninsula reunification and other pertinent issues.

Today’s hearing will review weapons of mass destruction on the Korean Peninsula.

In recent weeks, following admission by North Korean officials of their uranium

enrichment program, in violation of the Agreed Framework of 1994 and the Nuclear

Non-Proliferation Treaty, the level of public exchange between North Korea and the

United States has reached a new intensity.

Unfortunately, we have been at this juncture before. In 1994 North Korea was

removing spent fuel which could be reprocessed for use in nuclear weapons. Negotiation of the Agreed Framework brought a halt to immediate prospects for war. In

1998, North Korea launched a ballistic missile over Japan. While the United States

had become distracted by other intemational issues North Korea remained focused

on its nuclear program. It appears that maintenance of the Agreed Framework became policy in itself its fragility demonstrated by the 1998 missile launch by North

Korea.

Last year I outlined my thoughts regarding the vulnerability of the United States

to the use of weapons of mass destruction, whether from terrorist organizations or

rogue nations. I stand by my premise that every nation which has weapons and materials of mass destruction, must account for what it has, spend its own money or

obtain international technical and financial resources to safely secure what it has,

and pledge that no other nation, cell or cause will be allowed access or use. A satisfactory level of accountability, transparency and safety must be established in every

nation with a weapons of mass destruction program. When nations resist accountability, or when they make their territory available to terrorists who are seeking

weapons of mass destruction, our nation must be prepared to use force as well as

all diplomatic and economic tools at our disposal.

This doctrine which I espouse also applies to North Korea. While the United

States is and should be prepared to use force related to North Korea’s weapons of

mass destruction, we must guarantee to the American public and to Americans serving in Korea that all diplomatic options are being pursued.

The stakes are high. We must not discount the horrific consequences to American,

Korean, and perhaps Japanese lives resulting from a misunderstanding or miscalculation on the part of either side.

I would like to recall partial text of a joint statement issued by Senator Sam

Nunn and me in 1994 as part of a ‘‘Summary of Findings and Recommendations’’

regarding the crisis at that time.

Our policymaking and coordination with our allies, the timing of our

statements and actions, our responses to developments on the Korean Peninsula and our communications with our diplomatic and military leaders

in the field must all be sharpened and strengthened in the days and weeks

ahead. Korean developments must be the subject of clear, frequent focus by

top Clinton Administration officials, including the President. The United

States should designate a single senior official with access to the President,

the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense to help develop and coordinate U.S. policy and action on Korea. We must speak with one voice on

this sensitive matter.

This recommendation still applies today. While Americans have been deeply concerned about war with Iraq many have also considered the Korean crisis a more serious situation. In fact, both are very serious. Both are dangerous. Both need our

full attention.

It is apparent that North Korea has taken several provocative actions recently including steps which could lead to production of nuclear weapons in the next few

4

months. I believe that United States officials should talk to North Korean officials

about ending North Korean nuclear weapons programs with provisions of comprehensive international inspection to insure a successful cleanup procedure. North

Korea may mention in these talks its desire for non-aggression guarantees, potential

commercial relations with other countries, and urgent humanitarian food and fuel

contributions through international agencies to assist the North Korean people. We

should be prepared to talk to North Korea about all of this.

I ask the administration to address, promptly, not only the importance of international, multi-party diplomacy with North Korea, but the importance of immediate

United States leadership including direct talks between the United States and

North Korea.

The CHAIRMAN. It is a pleasure, as always, to have you before

the committee, Secretary Armitage, and will you please proceed

with your testimony.

STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD L. ARMITAGE, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE; ACCOMPANIED BY HON. JAMES A.

KELLY, ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR EAST ASIAN

AND PACIFIC AFFAIRS, DEPARTMENT OF STATE, WASHINGTON, DC

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With your permission,

I will submit my prepared testimony for the record and just make

a few opening remarks.

Mr. Chairman, I had the opportunity, following the invitation of

Senator Frist, to brief all Senators in S–407 on 16 January. I believe there were 53 or so Members there. But for those who were

not able to attend, let me briefly, in an unclassified way, lay out

how we got here and what we have done since I met with you on

the 16th of January, and then I will stop and try to answer any

questions.

The DPRK, North Korea, has desired for decades to have a nuclear capability. And in the mid-1980s, following up on a Russian

technical design, they actually built one themselves, a five-megawatt graphite moderated reactor. Also, in 1985, the North Koreans

decided to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty [NPT]. But it took from

1985 to 1992 to complete the negotiations with the International

Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] surrounding the safeguard process

and procedures in North Korea.

The IAEA, after getting safeguard processes negotiated successfully, started their look and their investigations into Yongbyon and

noticed, rather rapidly, an anomaly. That is, there appeared to be

more reprocessed fuel than the North Koreans had noted in their

report to the IAEA. The IAEA then asked for the ability to have

further investigations, which drove, apparently, the North Korean

Government into a paroxysm of rage. As a result, they invited the

IAEA inspectors to leave, announced a withdrawal from the NPT,

started a 90-day clock, which is required in the NPT to remove oneself from the Non-Proliferation Treaty, halted that clock with one

day remaining, began a series of intense—in fact, 16-month—negotiations, intense negotiations, with the United States, which culminated in the Agreed Framework of 1994.

During the time 1994 until the present administration, the previous administration had further noticed some anomalies in procurement patterns in North Korea, so much so that in 1999 our

concerns were raised with the Nuclear Suppliers Group in Vienna.

5

This administration, in June 2002, had a National Intelligence Estimate [NIE], which had, as its primary focus, to make an assessment how many weapons North Korea could possibly possess, and

they came out with an estimate of one to two weapons, possibly,

based on the amount, as they understood it, of unaccounted for fuel

in 1992 which the IAEA had identified. In a very small portion of

that NIE in June 2002, there was a few comments about a growing

belief that North Korea had engaged in at least an R&D project for

highly enriched uranium.

In July 2002, the administration received very good intelligence

which made us dramatically change our assessment from the

DPRK being involved in just an R&D program. And we found, for

instance, an order of magnitude difference in the estimate that we

had received of how many centrifuges they might be obtaining, vice

what we received in new intelligence, which showed that they were

receiving and acquiring many, many more than was originally

thought. And it led us to a rather intensive study, which resulted,

in September 2002, in a memo to consumers from the intelligence

community, which said that in our view, the North Koreans had

embarked on a production program, no longer an R&D program.

This rather dramatically changed the presentation that my colleague, Assistant Secretary James Kelly, was going to make in

Pyongyang from a rather bold approach that tried to address all

the security concerns on the Korean Peninsula in exchange for a

rather robust new relationship with North Korea, to an absolutely

necessity for us to confront the North Koreans with this information that we had about their program for highly enriched uranium,

which, of course, Jim Kelly did. And, much to our surprise, on the

second day of his talks, the first Vice-Foreign Minister came back

and not only acknowledged that there was this program, but he

said that ‘‘we have even more developed weapons,’’ which threw us

into a bit of a tizzy. We did not understand what those weapons

might be.

We have subsequently learned, from foreign envoys who have

gone to Pyongyang and talked to the North Koreans about that,

that what they are referring to is the soul and the special affection

of the Korean people for the army-first policy, united behind the direction of Kim Jong Il. So it just means the will of the people is

united to reject any sort of aggression. That is how we got here.

Now, what have we done since January 16? As we continue to

say, and the President continues to say, that we believe there is

a way to solve this diplomatically. Well, the Australians, the Russians, and the Republic of Korea have all sent various envoys to

Pyongyang and have engaged in different discussions. A twice-rescheduled IAEA board of Governors is now scheduled for 12 February. And Dr. ElBaradei, who is otherwise involved for these few

days, will be participating in that Board of Governors meeting.

Under Secretary John Bolton and Assistant Secretary James

Kelly have gone to Seoul to make sure we shored up that relationship. It is not a secret that we were experiencing a rise, a spike,

in anti-Americanism.

Additionally, the new government is in the process of forming.

One of the reasons we have been, in some minds, a little slow to

6

move off the mark is because, in fact, we do not have a new government. President Roh in Seoul, he is busy formulating it right now.

I went to Moscow to meet with the Deputy Foreign Minister

Losikov, who went to Pyongyang and spent 6 hours in talks with

Kim Jong Il. The DPRK condemned our President’s State of the

Union Message. The North/South talks began and were completed.

President-elect Roh has sent an envoy yesterday and today to meet

with the Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and, this morning,

right now, with the Secretary of State. And, finally, this afternoon,

the Secretary is going to meet with Foreign Minister Tang of

China. And this evening, early evening, he is scheduled to meet

with Foreign Minister Ivanov to discuss both his presentation tomorrow and the question of the North Korean situation and the

Korean Peninsula. And, finally, on Monday, I am meeting in a trilateral meeting with Japanese and Australians in a strategic meeting to try to figure out how we should move ahead.

So that is kind of a precise of where we are, and I will stop and

try to answer your questions, Mr. Chairman, colleagues.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Armitage follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. RICHARD L. ARMITAGE, DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE

Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee.

Thank you for inviting me to discuss recent developments on the Korean Peninsula. Much has happened, even in the short space of weeks since the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Marc Grossman, briefed your colleagues in the

House, and since I briefed many of you and your fellow Senators on the 16th of January. I welcome this opportunity to complement those closed sessions and to update

you, as well. We value, as always, your good counsel and will continue our close consultation.

Mr. Chairman, in just a few months, we will mark the 50th anniversary of the

Armistice that effectively ended the Korean War, which had by then claimed some

4 million Korean lives—and the lives of more than 34,000 Americans. In the years

since, the combined efforts of the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK

or South Korea) have deterred further conflict and preserved the security of the

South Korean people.

The Republic of Korea has without question prospered in this time. Indeed, today,

we look to South Korea as a key partner in the region—strategically, but also as

a flourishing democracy and a free people.

Mr. Chairman, I have tremendous faith in the ineluctable force of democracy and

a liberal economy. I have faith in the basic human longing to live free. I have no

doubt that if we, working with the international community, handle the current situation correctly, that the people of Korea will prevail.

North Korea’s (Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, or DPRK) programs to develop weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery are a fundamental

obstacle to that appealing vision for the future. They are also a threat to the international community, regional security, U.S. interests, and U.S. forces, which remain

an integral part of stability in the region.

It is time for North Korea to turn away from this self-destructive course. They

have nothing to gain from acquiring nuclear weapons—and much to lose. Indeed,

every day, the people of that country are paying a terrible price for these programs

in international isolation and misspent national resources.

Mr. Chairman, I know that your constituents and the constituents of every Member of this Committee are deeply concerned about this situation, particularly when

juxtaposed with events in the Middle East. So, I want to be clear today on how the

President sees the situation and the course he believes is correct for the United

States.

President Bush and Secretary Powell have said repeatedly that when it comes to

defending our nation, all options must remain on the table. Both have said that in

this case, at this time, we believe that diplomacy is our best option. We intend to

resolve the threats posed by North Korea’s programs by working with the international community to find a peaceful, diplomatic solution.

7

As President Bush said in his visit to South Korea last year, the United States

has no intention of invading North Korea. Secretary Powell reiterated this point

most recently in Davos, Switzerland, where he also stated that we are prepared to

communicate this position to the North Koreans in a way that is unmistakable.

Indeed, we are prepared to build a different kind of relationship with North

Korea. Last summer, in consultation with South Korea and Japan, the United

States was ready to pursue a bold new approach with Pyongyang. That approach

entailed a number of steps toward normalcy in our relationship, including political

and economic measures to help improve the lives of the North Korean people.

This bold approach was derailed, however, by our discovery of a covert uranium

enrichment program for nuclear weapons, which North Korea had been pursuing for

years in egregious violation of its international obligations.

We cannot change our relationship with the DPRK until the DPRK changes its

behavior. North Korea must abandon its nuclear weapons programs in a verifiable

and irreversible manner. Specifically, North Korea must return immediately to the

freeze on activities at the Yongbyon complex and dismantle the plutonium program

there. Second, North Korea must dismantle its program to develop nuclear weapons

through highly enriched uranium—and must allow international verification that it

has done so. Third, North Korea must cooperate fully with the International Atomic

Energy Agency (IAEA). Finally, North Korea must comply with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and adhere to the safeguards agreement that is part of

that treaty.

The United States will not dole out any ‘‘rewards’’ to convince North Korea to live

up to its existing obligations. But we do remain prepared to transform our relations

with that country, once it complies with its international obligations and commitments. Channels of communication between our countries remain open, but ultimately, it is the actions of North Korea that matter.

And North Korea needs to act soon, for the sake of its people. Today, conditions

in that country are appalling, and millions of North Koreans are at immediate risk

of starvation. The United States sees this as a critical international humanitarian

issue, and we are, in fact, the most generous donor in the world of food assistance

to the DPRK. Since 1995, we have provided 1.9 million metric tons of food, valued

at $620 million. For the 2002 World Food Program (WFP) operation in North Korea,

the United States contributed 155,000 metric tons of food commodities, valued at

$63 million, over half of what the WFP actually received last year.

President Bush has stressed that we will continue to provide this emergency assistance to the people of North Korea—we will not use food aid as a weapon. But

we do have concerns and we do face challenges with this assistance.

Specifically, the DPRK places onerous restrictions on the distribution of food. The

DPRK requires that the WFP provide six-day’s advance notice of visits to food distribution sites and does not allow the WFP to employ Korean-speaking staff. The

DPRK also denies access to the WFP to about 20 percent of North Korean counties.

These restrictions prevent us from being certain that the food we donate to North

Korea is going to the people who actually need it. No other nation in the world

places such excessive restrictions on food aid.

Mr. Chairman, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates

that as we sit here today, 800 million people around the world are going hungry.

38 million people in Africa are facing a hunger crisis. There are people here in our

own nation who do not have enough to eat.

In addition to meeting the needs of our own people, the United States provides

food aid to over 80 other countries. We will again provide our share of food aid to

the North Korean people, but these competing demands naturally will have to factor

into our decision about exactly how much aid to give North Korea. We look forward

to close consultation with the Committee on this issue.

We will also keep in close contact with you on the issue of our involvement with

KEDO.

We are consulting with our KEDO partners—South Korea, Japan, and the EU—

about KEDO’s future, including the fate of the light water reactor project. In the

meantime, the Administration has asked Congress to appropriate $3.5 million in

FY03 to fund the U.S. contribution to KEDO’s administrative account, should we

decide it is in our national interest to do so. I want to stress that no part of that

funding would go to heavy fuel oil shipments, which the KEDO Executive Board

suspended in October, or to light water reactor construction. But the ability to make

a contribution to the administrative account will give us flexibility in working with

our KEDO allies to achieve our shared nonproliferation goals. Given the fluidity and

dangers of the current situation, flexibility is going to continue to be crucial.

Positive relations with our partners and allies in the region and beyond will also

continue to be crucial, because the bottom line is that this is not a bilateral issue.

8

While the United States is willing to talk to North Korea about how to dismantle

its nuclear weapons program, this is not just a problem between our two nations.

The threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear programs sends ripples of instability

across the region—and around the globe. The Republic of Korea and Japan, but also

China, Russia, Australia and the other nations of this neighborhood have a direct

and pressing interest in this matter. We share a concern with all of these nations

about North Korea’s programs and we share a commitment that the Korean Peninsula remain free of nuclear weapons.

While the nations in the neighborhood must play a starring role in resolving this

problem, this is also an issue of international and multilateral interest.

For example, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) requires that states and

organizations upholding it, notably the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),

must be involved in this issue. We are pleased that the IAEA and its Director, Dr.

ElBaradei, continue to stress this point.

Last month, the 35 member nations of the Board of Governors of the International

Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) unanimously condemned DPRK actions. Specifically,

the Board issued a statement ‘‘deploring’’ North Korea’s suggestion that it will resume nuclear activities at the Yongbyon complex, its disabling of the monitoring

equipment installed there, and its expulsion of IAEA inspectors.

The IAEA also announced that it is no longer able to ‘‘exercise its responsibilities

under the safeguards agreement, namely, to verify that the DPRK is not diverting

nuclear material to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices . . .’’ The

IAEA called on the DPRK to act urgently to restore international confidence by complying with safeguards and resuming surveillance at Yongbyon.

Unfortunately, North Korea rejected the IAEA resolution, announcing its withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and suggesting that the nation

may resume flight testing of long-range missiles.

Unless North Korea takes some immediate action to reverse course, the IAEA

Board of Directors is likely to find at its next meeting that the DPRK is in further

noncompliance and report this to the UN Security Council.

We are working with our international partners and allies to make North Korea

understand the potential consequences of these dangerous and provocative actions.

Secretary Powell speaks regularly to his counterparts in the region, but also in the

EU and the P-5, as well to his counterparts in other governments. Without exception, they share our concerns and our commitment for a nuclear weapons-free Korean Peninsula.

Japan, in particular, has major interests at stake, and we coordinate very closely

on a bilateral basis, as well as trilaterally with South Korea. Japan has stated that

it will not complete normalization with North Korea without an end to the nuclear

weapons program.

Of course, our consultation with South Korea is especially close.

We will continue to deepen and strengthen our alliance with the Republic of

Korea. We look forward to having a very close and effective working relationship

with the new South Korean administration of Roh Moo-hyun, as we have had with

President Kim Daejung. Indeed, today, President-Elect Roh’s special envoy, Mr.

Chyung Dae Chul, is meeting with senior Administration officials to discuss how we

can best work together to promote our share nonproliferation goals on the Korean

Peninsula.

Last month, Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security

John Bolton and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and Pacific Affairs

James Kelly both had extremely useful meetings in South Korea—and in other nations in the region.

We have communicated consistently our support for dialogue between South and

North Korea as part of the international community’s effort to find a diplomatic solution. Most recently, we strongly supported the visit to the DPRK by President

Kim’s Special Envoy, Lim Dong-won. During his meetings with North Korean officials last week, Special Envoy Lim emphasized the international community’s grave

concerns about the North’s nuclear weapons program, and he urged the North to

respond to those concerns.

We remain well aware that for South Korea, this is more than a matter of contiguity, this is a matter of consanguinity. These two nations share a border and

blood ties, and we understand that South Korea has much to lose from continued

DPRK intransigence and hostility—and much to gain if the North turns away from

its present course. We will continue to work closely and consult constantly with our

partners in the ROK, as well as Japan and our other friends and allies in the region, who are most directly affected by North Korean decisions and actions.

We will also continue to work closely with the Members of this Committee as we

seek a diplomatic solution to this situation. Our interests as a country on a matter

9

of such seriousness are best served by a concerted U.S. policy, and we are committed to our ongoing consultation with Congress.

THE CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much.

For the moment we will have a first round with 5 minutes and

ask the timekeeper to start on my time at this moment, and we

will go back and forth on both sides of the aisle.

Secretary Armitage, the description you have made of our diplomacy is not only accurate, but it shows its vigor. And my quarrel

would not be with any of the steps that you have taken. It just appears, as I had indicated in my opening statement, that other nations are prepared to be helpful, some more so, apparently, than

others, and we would like to have an international solution and a

group around the table because of the proximity of the neighbors,

the danger to them, or the potential good that might come from

better relations.

There is a need for direct talks between the United States and

North Korea. And at least I believe that we ought to discuss with

the North Koreans the issues that, unfortunately, did not get discussed with Secretary Kelly’s mission, which they might have discussed. It was fully appropriate they be apprised of our knowledge

that they had a program going. Perhaps we should have not been

surprised, but we were. But, in any event, not much else occurred

during that meeting. I would hope it might be resumed, and the

reason being that it appears that, otherwise, while we are very

much engaged in diplomacy in the Iraq situation and elsewhere

around the world with the war on terror, North Korea may simply

be on hold—at least that is an impression that many Senators

have, a hope that somehow nothing precipitous occurs. But the

North Koreans understand that, apparently, and, therefore, announce actions periodically, and we are left, it seems to me, in a

more difficult situation without an appreciable change on the part

of the Chinese or the Russians.

Perhaps, as you talk to the emissary today from the new President, there may be plans of activity there that are suggested, and

we certainly welcome that emissary’s coming to the United States.

Let me just, without pursuing that, ask one more question, and

that is, What is the value of encouraging other nations to receive

North Korean refugees? Specifically, there are a great number of

people in anguish in North Korea. They take desperate measures

to leave that country. It is apparent that the Chinese are taking

equally vigorous measures to keep them in.

It has been apparent for a long time that South Korean friends

have said to us, ‘‘Hang on. If, in fact, all of the North Koreans who

want to unite with us come to South Korea now, it will be very upsetting to our economy, to our politics. We want North Korea reformed inside of North Korea without too many others with us, despite our kinship with North Korean brothers.’’

It is not clear that the United States has been particularly eager

to see North Korean refugees here, or made provision for that. But

my question today, without being hopelessly provocative, is, why

not? Why do we not recognize—and the parallels are not precise or

the same—that much happened in Europe when people began to

come out of East Germany to West Germany or out of Hungary, out

of Poland, out of behind the Iron Curtain. This was a major factor

10

in the change of life and the change of negotiations and politics. It

recognized freedom and the fact that people who are suffering deserve a chance to live.

So I would just respectfully ask, even as you are considering the

tough question of direct talks, which is a difficult one, to be thinking about how we encourage countries, including our own, to think

about receiving North Koreans who may come out seeking freedom.

I think that might change the equation and the conversations.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, sir.

First of all, of course we are going to have to have direct talks

with the North Koreans. There is no question about it. Before we

do that, we want to make sure, as I tried to indicate on the 16th

of January, that we have, one, a strong international platform from

which to have these talks, and, two, we do not want this to become

simply a problem between the United States and the DPRK.

As you suggest, Mr. Chairman, there are regional good friends of

ours, allies of ours, plus two major powers, who are intimately involved in this, and we want to make sure this thing does not rub

off entirely on us to come up with a solution. We are part of it, and

we are going to have to speak to the North Koreans, and we shall,

at a point in time when it is considered efficacious to move forward.

In the closed briefing we had on the 16th, sir, Senator

Brownback made some very heartwarming and, I think, heartfelt

remarks about refugees in North Korea. And, further, there was a

rather riveting presentation on 60 Minutes on Sunday evening.

And, again, Senator Brownback was there.

Based on our discussions on the 16th, in room 407, I went back

to the State Department, and we have begun, with our International Organizations Bureau, Population, Refugees and Migration Bureau and East Asia Pacific Bureau, to work together on how

we can better manage refugee flows and handle them.

There are hundreds, who, I am told, have been resettled this

year in South Korea. We are working hard to—where we know

about it and find out about it—to stop the Chinese from sending

back people to God knows what in North Korea.

But you and I and some others here have been involved in other

refugee flows, not just Eastern European—in Vietnam, where I

have sponsored more than 40 of these folks. Unfortunately, I was

not able to sponsor more, because some died on the way out. And

we have to be careful what we start. And we have got to make sure

we are in a situation where we can follow through correctly if we

encourage greater refugee flows. It is not something, I think, to be

done just on a whim. And I am not suggesting at all you are. But

that is the downside that worries me and that we have to figure

out how to handle.

The CHAIRMAN. I thank you for that response.

Senator Feingold.

Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this

hearing at this important time. And I thank, Secretary Armitage,

again, for all his cooperation with the committee.

I would like to follow on the chairman’s comments. Some statements from some in the administration suggest that the United

States is resigned to the reality of a nuclear-armed, nuclear-weapVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:38 May 07, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00014 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 85795 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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ons-producing North Korea. Given North Korea’s history of proliferation, I find this posture unacceptable, and can you assure me

that this is not the case?

Mr. ARMITAGE. I can so assure you.

Senator FEINGOLD. Now, when some in the Muslim world

suggest—— Mr. ARMITAGE. Excuse me.

Senator FEINGOLD. Yes, please.

Mr. ARMITAGE. You will find, I think, that those who make this

comment are always unnamed. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe there is

someone out there who is uninformed, but they are generally

unnamed. And I can so assure you.

Senator FEINGOLD. Very good.

When some in the Muslim world suggest that America appears

to have a higher level of tolerance for North Korean WMD development than for Iraqi development, and then further suggest that

this evidence of hostility toward Islam, how are we responding to

this? And is this something we are hearing in our posts in the Muslim world?

Mr. ARMITAGE. I have not been informed that we are hearing

that analogy in the Muslim world, but I know what you are talking

about. Our view, which some question, is that we have given over

12 years of time to try to resolve the situation with Iraq, and we

have been after finding out about the North Koreans cheating on

their 1994 agreement. We have only had a few months of diplomacy, Senator.

Senator FEINGOLD. So you have not heard anything from Muslim

or Arab countries that this is somehow a double standard?

Mr. ARMITAGE. I do not recall, personally. I will not say that it

has not come in, but I have not been, you know, hit up. And I meet

with our visitors from the Arab worlds, and I do not recall seeing

a cable on that. I do recall seeing a certain editorial opinion here,

more broadly, in the United States about that, sir.

Senator FEINGOLD. Well, I would appreciate any followup from

the Department on this point. I think, obviously, how we are coming off in the Arab and Muslim world is a terribly important thing

and, as it relates to North Korea, is something I am interested in

following.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, sir.

[A classified response was subsequently received.]

Senator FEINGOLD. Would you compare for me North Korea’s history of proliferation with that of Iraq? Which country has a more

worrisome record of proliferation?

Mr. ARMITAGE. I think, in strict terms of proliferation, I would

say North Korea, as I think I indicated to you in our briefing last

week. It has been, to my knowledge, limited entirely to the missile

proliferation, and they have proliferated to Yemen, to Pakistan, to

Iran, Egypt, and other places, and we have been very vigorous in

trying to stop that where we can find it, and we have had some

real success in Egypt.

In terms of chemical weapons [CW] and biological weapons [BW]

proliferation, we do believe that the North Koreans have a program, but we have not seen them proliferate that. There are technology suspicions that they have proliferated technology about nuVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:38 May 07, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00015 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 85795 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
12

clear weapons. We have no knowledge and no information about

fissile material.

On the question of Saddam Hussein, we know where he was in

1993. If he had not been interrupted by the gulf war, I think most

feel that he would have had a weapon by 1993 or so, a nuclear

weapon. His BW and CW affection will be well documented tomorrow, I believe, by Secretary Powell and I do not want to overstate

it, for the obvious reasons—some intersections with various and

sundry terrorist groups. And that is our real fear with Iraq. I might

add, plus the fact that he’s used them. He has invaded two of his

neighbors in the last decade-and-a-half. But—so he has had quite

an active life.

Senator FEINGOLD. Is it fair to say that, in terms of the discussions we have had about Iraq, that proliferation of these weapons

is not, in particular, the leading modus operandi of that regime?

Perhaps the development, the threats, but I would argue that we

have not heard a lot about this as being a normal modus operandi

of Baghdad.

Mr. ARMITAGE. No, you have heard from us, sir, I think, that we

believe he wants these weapons to dominate, to intimidate, and to

attack.

Senator FEINGOLD. In your assessment, how badly damaged is

the U.S./South Korean relationship at this point? Is it reparable?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, it is. It is clearly reparable. And both the

outgoing President, Kim Dae-Jung, and the incoming President

have taken great pains—as well as recent editorial opinion—have

taken great pains to note the closeness of our relationship over the

years.

I acknowledge that there was anti-Americanism, and it is understandable. And you know the reasons probably better than I.

Generational change is part of it. But I think there is one more

subtle one, and I—we are trying to get a handle on it, and it is

this: South Korea is a country that has the tenth largest economy

in the world. They successfully have had the Olympic Games. They

successfully had the World Cup last year. And they are tired of the

big boys playing basketball over their heads, whether it is China

or Russia or the United States. So I believe we have a lot of work

to do in adjusting our own, sort of, presentations and work with the

Republic of Korea, and I think we are getting it done.

Senator FEINGOLD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

[The prepared statement of Senator Feingold follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD

I thank Chairman Lugar and Senator Biden for calling this critically important

hearing, and I thank all of the witnesses for their time and their insight.

When it comes to North Korea, this administration’s response to the crisis has involved denial—claiming that there is no crisis—and then lurching from one position

to another by refusing to talk, then offering to talk, then offering to talk and to provide incentives. The administration has failed to unify key actors—South Korea,

Japan, China, and Russia—behind any coordinated response, and has failed to

defuse the crisis. What’s more, I fear that the mixed messages the U.S. is sending

about North Korea have combined with the administration’s intense focus on Iraq,

unintentionally creating a very dangerous policy brew.

As I mentioned last week, in the State of the Union Address, the President

seemed to suggest that the lesson to be learned from the recent history of the Korean Peninsula is that we must stop potential proliferators before they have the

means to blackmail the international community. I wholeheartedly agree. But given

13

the very different approach being taken to Iraq and North Korea, I am concerned

that the rest of the world is starting to learn the following lesson about U.S. policy:

if you acquire nuclear weapons you can be free from the threat of military action,

but if you do not, you may be subject to preemptive invasion. This scenario, with

its emphasis on preemption, sets out real incentives for proliferation and the pursuit

of WMD as quickly as possible. That cannot possible be in the interest of global stability and in the interest of the security of the United States of America.

This is a terribly difficult and sensitive situation, and of course, diplomacy does

not lend itself to one-size-fits-all answers. But while some may wish to set North

Korea aside so that we can focus on Iraq, I believe that the danger in this overall

policy message is growing greater every day. We need clarity now. I hope that we

can start finding some in this hearing today.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Feingold.

Let me mention, as I should have earlier, that mention has been

made of the diplomacy of Assistant Secretary Jim Kelly, and he is

immediately behind the Secretary, and I will call upon you, Mr.

Secretary, to ask him to help you whenever you need to. But we

are appreciative of your being here and of your service to your

country.

Mr. ARMITAGE. I need plenty of help, Mr. Chairman. No question

about it.

The CHAIRMAN. I call now on Senator Hagel.

Senator HAGEL. Mr. Chairman, thank you. Welcome, again Mr.

Secretary.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, Senator.

Senator HAGEL. It is always reassuring to have you up here for

your weekly briefing.

It is your pleasing personality that we respond to. You enhance

the dialog considerably with your charm.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, Senator.

Senator HAGEL. Mr. Secretary, you took us through an interesting timeframe, I think, beginning back in June of 2002, as to

what we knew, generally, when, and what we are doing, where we

are. But I want to go back to an earlier date that was referenced

in a Washington Post article, which you saw, this weekend. And in

the Post article, to paraphrase it, it says that in November 2001,

that we were aware of, according to the Livermore National Laboratory people, that North Korea was up to something, in fact moving rapidly on development of uranium enrichment programs.

Was that an oversight that you did not mention that, or did not

it happen, or did you know about it, or did no one know about it?

Why did we not respond to that, if, in fact, that is true?

Mr. ARMITAGE. I was uninformed about it. I have asked about it.

I do not think it was true. I think what happened is the Livermore

Laboratory took part in or was part of a joint energy intelligence

assessment, and that their contributions, I have been informed,

confine themselves to research and development, not a production

of highly enriched uranium [HEU]. I can be corrected, and we will

research it further, but I—of course I looked at that article and was

very unhappy that it appeared.

Senator HAGEL. So you do not put much stock in that article.

Mr. ARMITAGE. I do not put much stock in that part. And I—if

I may take advantage, sir, Senator Biden and Senator Levin and

Senator Daschle sent a letter to Dr. Rice, which, of course, she will

be answering. But, in it, I think that article is referred to, as well

as another unnamed administration official, who alleged that the

14

administration was keeping quiet about recent developments concerning activity at Yongbyon.

I want to hasten to let the chairman know and let all of you

know that I called, immediately upon seeing that letter, to the Deputy National Security Advisor, who said, ‘‘Of course that’s not the

case.’’ And in my own investigations, I know that the President’s

special representative to the DPRK, Jack Pritchard, the day before

that article came out, had already briefed the general counsel to

the Senate Budget Committee.

So I think there is nothing to it, and I want to put a spike in

it if I can.

Senator HAGEL. So as far as you know, no senior officials, from

the President on down, were told of this report if, in fact, it happened.

Mr. ARMITAGE. I am uninformed that they were told anything

more than some suspicions about R&D, which followed on the 1999

anomalies in procurement, Senator.

Senator HAGEL. Thank you. How much do we know about Pakistan’s involvement in helping the North Koreans with their nuclear

program?

Mr. ARMITAGE. We know it is both ways, and we know a good

bit about a North Korean/Pakistan relationship. I, myself, however,

have had conversations, personally, direct with President

Musharraf, who has assured us these are over and they were in the

past.

But, beyond that, with your permission, I think it is a classified

matter.

Senator HAGEL. Well, there has been an awful lot out in the public on this and we should probably pursue this in a closed forum.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, you absolutely should.

Senator HAGEL. You have mentioned, in response to the chairman, that we intend to have talks with North Korea. Am I correct

on what you said?

Mr. ARMITAGE. That is correct, Senator.

Senator HAGEL. Is there a timetable on that?

Mr. ARMITAGE. No, there is not. I certainly—it is not going to be,

I think, before we get a steady government in the Republic of

Korea, but there is no question—I spoke to the Secretary about it

this morning—we are absolutely going to have to talk with them,

bilaterally. We acknowledge that.

Senator HAGEL. Are you concerned that the North Koreans may

be on an accelerated program here to enrich uranium, and once

that plutonium is out it could most likely be irretrievable and terrorists get their hands on this, far more dangerous maybe than

what Saddam Hussein may be doing or not doing and so is the

timeframe not important here?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, the timeframe is important. I am concerned,

and I do not think, given the poverty of North Korea, that it would

be too long after she had a good amount of fissile material to do

whatever she wanted to do with it, first, that she would be inclined

to engage with somebody, a non-state actor or a rogue state.

However, I believe there is another major difference between

Iraq and North Korea. We think we know what Kim Jong Il wants,

at least the experience of our predecessors in the previous adminisVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:38 May 07, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 85795 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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tration indicate that he wants some economic benefits and things

of that nature in exchange for these programs.

It is quite a different situation in Iraq, Senator, where we feel

that what he wants to do, as I have said, is intimidate, dominate,

and attack. And we are not quite sure that is the motivation of

Kim Jong-Il.

Senator HAGEL. He just wants to sell it?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Oh, I think he wants to use it for economic benefit, sell, barter, whatever.

Senator HAGEL. You do not see any connection to the danger to

the world? That is not a concern to you? Urgency to that?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, that is a concern. It is an absolute concern.

I have got several concerns in the world, and that is one of them,

and we are working it as best we can. I would just say that we

have been at this for several months, vice the other situation where

we have been at it for 12 years.

Senator HAGEL. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Hagel.

Senator Boxer.

Senator BOXER. Secretary Armitage, welcome again. And I know

the burdens you bear, and I just want to thank you for giving so

much, because I know it is really hard. And you and I have differences, but we are friends, and that is important to me.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you.

Senator BOXER. I want to report to you, again, having gone home

again, that the people of my State are very anxious, and they are

anxious about the economy, they are anxious about Iraq, they are

anxious about North Korea, and then the horrible tragedy where

we all saw the faces of the best and the brightest, and we worry,

and we think, God, are we going to see more of this? And it is a

tough time.

I want to go back a little bit to a year ago, when the President

made his very strong, in a way, angry speech about the ‘‘axis of

evil.’’ Because I am thinking, as I sit here today, that that was a

mistake, and I want to talk to you about it.

You know about North Korea’s history—isolation, a little paranoia, mistrustful, and the rest—and you are sitting in North Korea,

and the President of the only superpower in the world lists three

countries, and you are the second one on the list, and the first one

is about to be invaded—and certainly some of us hope we can avoid

this, but it certainly looks that way—in an attack that probably we

have not seen in recent memory. Now, he is sitting there, and we

know he is already isolated. He has got horrible economic problems

and the rest. And he is thinking, ‘‘I’m probably next.’’ Now, he then is trying to escape this, what he considers, perhaps, inevitable tragedy for his people, as he sees it, and, of course,

himself and his legacy, as he sees it. And so he turns to this idea

of getting the attention of the United States and trying to avert

this situation.

And I am just curious. Before the President put North Korea into

the ‘‘axis of evil,’’ did he bring everyone in from the State Department? Did he say—because, you know, in diplomacy, everything

you say has a reaction. Did he talk about this, what would be the

impact? And, if so, what was the advice, if you can tell it to us?

16

Mr. ARMITAGE. Well, I have, in previous testimony, and I am

more than happy to talk about it. But there is one thing that I

think we have to get right on the record crystal-clear, and that is

the development of the HEU facility preceded the ‘‘axis of evil’’ comments by our President. They preceded by a couple of years. So

let us be clear on that. He was cheating on his agreement with our

predecessors before the President ever said anything about ‘‘axis of

evil.’’

Senator BOXER. Yes.

Now, on the State of the Union Speech, the way we do it in this

administration is, the top echelons of the Defense Department and

the State Department do see the State of the Union Speech. Secretary Powell and I sat in his office last year, had several comments over the State of the Union Speech. Both of us—I hesitate

to tell you—both of us thought ‘‘axis of evil’’ was a fitting comment.

And the reason we thought it was because the states abused—the

three named, abused their own populations, they were implacable

foes of the United States, and implacable foes of allies of ours—

South Korea, on the one hand, and Israel, in the case of Iraq and

Iran—and, finally, that we felt they, all three, were striving, and

had strived, historically, for weapons of mass destruction.

So I hesitate to report to you, but the Secretary and I——

Senator BOXER. That’s all right.

Mr. ARMITAGE [continuing]. Just passed right by that one, and

we had other comments.

Senator BOXER. Well, let me just say to you, I am not arguing

whether it is fitting, and I could fit some other dictators in that list

myself. That is not the point I am making. I am asking if you discussed what reaction there might have been to it, not that it was

fitting. But, in diplomacy, there are a lot of things we all want to

say, and yet, you know, you have got to think about how it sounds

and how people take it.

But you just felt it was fitting, and you did not really get into

the reaction.

Mr. ARMITAGE. That is exactly correct, Senator.

Senator BOXER. OK, thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Boxer.

Senator Chafee.

Senator CHAFEE. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Mr.

Secretary. It is good to see you again.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, sir.

Senator CHAFEE. I am curious about what has changed and what

happened since the optimistic 1994 Agreed Framework. It seemed

as though we were cooperating and there was a thaw in our relationship. Even in 1999, I believe President Clinton agreed to lift

some sanctions. He said they were ‘‘cheating.’’ As we look back,

what went wrong? What could we have done better, as now we see

a very difficult situation with nuclear weapons there and the grave

threat of proliferation? As we look back, what could we have done

different? It seemed as though everything was so optimistic for

awhile, even as recently as 1999, as I said, with the lifting of sanctions.

Mr. ARMITAGE. That is a great question. I am not sure I have a

competent answer. I am going to try. First of all, there are some

17

good things that happened. I think it is quite clear that, from 1994

to now, Yongbyon, itself, did not produce more plutonium which

could be turned into nuclear weapons. And so there are dozens of

nuclear weapons that North Korea does not have because of the

Framework Agreement. And we have to acknowledge that, I believe.

I think, equally, as we have looked back—intelligence hindsight,

just like our hindsight, is clear—we find that the North Koreans

were, at least from February 2000, intent on going to a full-up production program of HEU. And that, as intelligence keeps looking

back, they get more and more granularity.

I am not sure what we could have done. Look what happened to

the South Koreans, who had, I think, the most well-disposed leader

of South Korea possible in Kim Dae-Jung, who leaned way forward

to try to accommodate Pyongyang and was basically rebuffed. He

did get one summit meeting.

So I think that my view is—and I would defer to my colleagues

on the following panel and Ash Carter, particularly, who had something really to do with the Framework Agreement—I think that

Kim Jong Il was intent on having it both ways. He wanted the economic benefits from the 1994 agreement, but he also was intent in

his own pace in developing these weapons. That is the inescapable

conclusion I come to.

Senator CHAFEE. And then, consequently, as we look ahead, and

assuming we will be negotiating future agreements with other

countries, with the possibility they might be cheating also, trying

to achieve what you just mentioned, both the economic benefits and

what is forbidden by the agreement, what—you said, in February

2000, I believe was the first sign of noncompliance. Looking back

but also looking ahead, what do we do when we find cheating?

What is the proper pressure to try and have a cooperative relationship where both sides can achieve their aims?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Well, in some cases, it is one in which we simply

jawbone and point out the inadvisability of a path that is being followed. And I would say, in that regard, South Africa springs to the

fore, Brazil too. Taiwan, at one time, was going to be engaged in

a program of nuclear weapons development, and they eschewed it

because of a lot of conversations that the late Gaston Sieger and

others had with the leadership of Taiwan for their own self-interest.

In other cases, such as ones that the Members of the Congress

are very well aware of, we have been able to retard the development of these through sanctions and through various legislation.

Pakistan comes to mind in this regard.

So I think it is very much sui generis, and I know how

unsatisfying that is as an answer, but I think it is the case, sir.

Senator CHAFEE. And, last, you mentioned some that are cooperating—Brazil and others. Are there any countries out there that we

fear might be developing nuclear programs that are hostile?

Mr. ARMITAGE. We are always looking at Libya. I am unaware

right now, that Syria poses a concern in this regard, but we keep

our eye on her, but Libya is one.

Senator CHAFEE. And any advice on how we deal with that?

What are we doing to prevent a North Korea?

18

Mr. ARMITAGE. Without trying to wiggle off the hook, I would request to handle that in classified or closed session, sir.

Senator CHAFEE. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, Mr. Chafee.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Chafee.

Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent

that my opening statement be placed in the record as if read.

The CHAIRMAN. So ordered.

Senator BIDEN. And so I will just briefly refer to it. I would suggest and highly commend to my colleagues the report that Secretary Armitage—commend the Armitage report to my colleagues.

And the report—there are some key suggestions that spark discussion.

‘‘We have to regain the diplomatic initiative. The U.S. policy toward North Korea has become largely reactive and predictable,

with U.S. diplomacy characterized by a cycle of North Korean provocation or demand and American response.’’ Good idea. But even

now the Bush administration claims the ball is in North Korea’s

court. North Korea says it is in our court. From where I sit, the

ball is sort of stuck in a net somewhere, Mr. Secretary.

‘‘A new approach,’’ he went on to say, ‘‘must treat the Agreed

Framework as the beginning of a policy toward North Korea, not

as the end of the problem. We should clearly formulate answers to

two key questions. First, what precisely do we want from North

Korea, and what price are we prepared to pay? Second, are we prepared to take a different course if, after exhausting all reasonable

diplomatic efforts, we conclude that no worthwhile accord is possible?’’ Another great question. You have answered. I think State

has answered. But, all due respect, I do not think the administration has answered that question, at least I do not quite know the

answer. You also point out that ‘‘The U.S. point person should be

designated by the President in consultation with congressional

leaders and should report directly to the President,’’ another good

idea.

Mr. Kelly is a fine, fine guy, but I do not know that that has

been in consultation with us. I do not know how far that has gone.

And, in no way, Mr. Secretary, am I suggesting that you are not

fully up to the job. But it raises the profile, it raises the issue here

in this body, if, in fact, it has been one that is more engaged at

the front end. I think it is a point being made by—I hope I am not

mischaracterizing, but a point made by Senator Hagel about this

should be a little higher profile, because we keep—we sound like

we are downplaying it.

I will not go through the rest of the report, but I really, truly—

I agree with what you say in the report. I know there are—I should

not say ‘‘know’’—it is my impression that there is some—not disagreement, but some nuance differences—a word I know the President does not like when I use it with him, ‘‘nuance’’—differences

within the administration on how to proceed.

Which leads me to the essence of my statement, which is that,

as I understand, the chairman indicated that we should be talking,

and talking now, and be prepared to discuss all issues now, and

19

need to have direct talks. I think he is dead right. I have shared

that view from the outset, enunciated it early on.

And I have a few questions, if my—start the clock ticking on my

5 minutes now, since I did not make the whole opening statement.

I am a little—let me just put it this way. How does the equation

change in the minds of the administration, in terms of moving this

from an important issue to a crisis, if it is—would be moved by it?

How does the equation change if North Korea uncorks that stuff,

reprocesses the material, gets the additional plutonium, and goes

from having one or two nuclear weapons to having six to eight,

which is, in the near term, a capability they posses—how does

that—how do we view that?

I mean, obviously, we do not view that as good. It is a bad idea.

But do we view that as materially changing our security relative

to North Korea? If the Lord Almighty came down and sat in the

middle of this room and said, ‘‘Look, they’re going to eight, but

that’s all they’re going to do,’’ what is the change between one to

two, and six to eight?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, sir. First of all, thank you for the comments

on that bipartisan report, which I chaired, and even a member of

your staff participated in. And you will note that——

Senator BIDEN. I think he is the one that recommended I read

it.

Mr. ARMITAGE. I thought he would.

That the basic recommendations in that bipartisan report were

the basis for the so-called ‘‘bold approach’’ that President Bush authorized Assistant Secretary James Kelly to convey to Pyongyang.

And you will note that the so-called Armitage report is not very far

from the excellent job that Bill Perry and Ash Carter—and they

will speak about it more astutely than I in a few minutes—engaged

in, where you gave North Korea a choice of two branches—one,

good things follow; and the other, bad things follow. He didn’t necessarily say that we were going to war, but that you would face a

much more negative military equation than you face at the present

time.

The big change in going from two to eight weapons would be on

the danger of proliferation for the United States.

Senator BIDEN. Proliferation of the actual weapon.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Of the fissile material, sir.

Senator BIDEN. The fissile material.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Right now, the 8,000 fuel rods, if they were reprocessed—if they are taken out of the ponds, if they move to the

reprocessing facility—you can harvest, as I understand it, 25 to 30

kilos of plutonium, which would be enough for four to six weapons,

which would then add up to your eight. So I think—in several

months.

Senator BIDEN. All right. Now, so we worry that they would divert the plutonium to some other source, whether it is a non-state

actor or a state actor, as opposed to putting it in new nuclear warheads that they would produce.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Let me explain my reasoning on this, Senator.

First of all, the Republic of Korea is already under as much threat

as they can stand, when they have 40 percent of their population

and 60 percent of the GDP under the guns and the rockets of the

20

forward-deployed army of North Korea. So I do not think another

nuclear weapon or two in that regard dramatically changes their

equation.

Where it’s changed, in the first instance, is with Japan, and this

is where our equities are very high, and particularly if the North

Koreans continued to develop their missiles. So it’s the marriage of

Taepo Dong capabilities, No Dong capabilities, extended, where the

threat to our allies comes in, and then laterally. Right now, we

know that their Taepo Dong fired to 3,800 miles or so, based on

the 1998 test. And if that reached our shores, then, of course, the

threat goes up to us dramatically.

But we really are pushing back on the notion of ‘‘crisis,’’ not because it has anything to do with Iraq, but because why tell the

other guy he’s gotten your attention so much?

Senator BIDEN. Well, the only reason is if he got your attention

because you are materially disadvantaged by what he is about to

do. But, OK, how—this notion of multilateral/bilateral, I think we

all agree—I may be wrong—that if we can do this multilaterally,

in talking with the North Koreans, it’s a much better way to do it.

But, in my discussions with the Japanese and the South Koreans,

they’re saying, ‘‘Multilateral is good, count us in, but don’t wait. We

recommend you do it bilaterally.’’ Now, am I wrong? Are they not

recommending that?

Mr. ARMITAGE. No, they are, indeed, suggesting that. And our

suggestion is not quite that we handle these talks multilaterally,

but we have a multilateral umbrella of any sort.

Senator BIDEN. No, I understand that. No, I understand that.

But this is a matter of, maybe, form over substance right now,

and—but you’re saying—so everybody understands, because I do

understand it, and the Secretary has been kind enough to lay it out

for me, as well—is that you’re just looking for an umbrella so that

we—not ‘‘just’’—but looking for an umbrella where you have the

Chinese, the Russians, the South Koreans, the Japanese, and anyone else, who—and us—who sponsors a meeting somewhere,

whether it’s New York or wherever else, and that that’s the rationale for the meeting, but once in the meeting, you and/or the Secretary or old Kelly back there are going to sit down with these boys

and talk turkey one to one.

Mr. ARMITAGE. I suspect Mr. Kelly has blunted his lance with

the North Koreans for awhile.

Senator BIDEN. Yes, and——

Mr. ARMITAGE. We might need someone else.

Senator BIDEN. But, seriously, I understand that’s the rationale.

But what—the reason I pressed the first point—I realize my time

is up, and I’ll cease, Mr. Chairman—but one of the reason why I

asked the first question about how, materially, does—do things

change, in terms of our flexibility and our security and our concerns if we go from two to eight, because that’s what we’re talking

about there. Once they uncork this, you have, as you point out, x

number of kilos of plutonium that not only can be used to build

those weapons, but also used to export to terrorists, if they were

so inclined. And that’s going to happen pretty soon, based on—or

it may very well happen pretty soon, based on some intelligence

21

data that has been made public, as well as what hasn’t been made

public.

And so I—we’re not going to have a chance—I won’t have a

chance in a second round, because you’re going to have to go, but

I really hope we do not let, you know, form impact so significantly

on substance here.

Mr. ARMITAGE. The Secretary told me about your phone conversation with him over the weekend, sir. He took it very seriously.

We discussed it on Sunday.

Senator BIDEN. And I appreciate his—— Mr. ARMITAGE. I know he laid out for you our views.

Senator BIDEN [continuing]. His point of view. Speaking for myself, not him, there is always the chance that this is a bluff, that

they really aren’t going to go forward and, to use the phrase being

used now, ‘‘uncork’’ this and that we have time.

What I wanted to ask, and maybe someone else will, is, What is

the downside? What’s the downside for us—for example, us signing

a nonaggression pact, for example? I mean, what is the downside,

if that’s one of the demands? You don’t have to answer it now, because my time’s up. Maybe someone else will want to speak to that.

I thank you very much.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Biden.

Why don’t you proceed to answer the question?

Mr. ARMITAGE. I will try. I mentioned this in S–407. I got a lot

of nods from the Senators who were there assembled. I said that

our estimation was there was a zero chance, under the present circumstances, of being able to get a treaty of nonaggression through

the U.S. Senate. And the North Koreans had started out stating

they just wanted to document it in some fashion, a nonaggression

pledge, and the Secretary responded that we would be able to accommodate that. But now they’re saying they want a treaty that

is ratified by the U.S. Congress, and, of course, by the Senate is

what they mean. And it is our estimation today that there’s zero

chance of that being possible.

Senator BIDEN. If the President of the United States said he

wanted it, I’ll bet you a million dollars they would change. But

that’s up to him.

[The prepared statement of Senator Biden follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF SENATOR JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR.

Mr. Chairman, it’s easy to have a feeling of deja vu today. North Korea’s pursuit

of nuclear arms, in clear breach of its international treaty obligations and bilateral

commitments, has brought Pyongyang to the edge of the same precipice it approached in 1994.

Our challenge is clear: we must stop North Korea from going into serial production of fissile material and nuclear weapons.

If we do not, we will face many dangers:

• The North could become a Plutonium or Uranium factory, selling fissile material or weapons to the highest bidder. They have an established track record

as one of the world’s worst proliferators already, with customers like Iran, Libya

and Syria.

• The North could spark a nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia, with Japan,

South Korea, and even Taiwan forced to reconsider their own commitment to

remaining non-nuclear states. That, in turn, could cause China to add to its arsenal, and then India and Pakistan to do the same.

• And of course in the event of a war on the peninsula, we would confront a much

more dangerous enemy, with every nuclear weapon magnifying the risks.

22

The threats are real, but our options are few.

Some support a military strike to take out the North’s nuclear facilities. I don’t

think we should ever rule out force, but in this case it is hardly an attractive option—it must be a last option. Even if we could destroy the North’s nuclear facilities—and I would note parenthetically that we don’t even know where many of them are—the risk of sparking a general war on the peninsula would be very real.

And that war would not be characterized by neat explosions viewed through the

gun camera of an F–15 Strike Eagle as broadcast on CNN. It would be messy and

bloody. The North’s forward-deployed artillery tubes can hit Seoul without warning

from hardened firing positions.

There are also political obstacles to a military strike. U.S. allies South Korea and

Japan strongly oppose any attempt to use military force to compel North Korea’s

nuclear disarmament.

As for sanctions, we don’t have many arrows left in that quiver. We have already

cut off the North’s access to international loans and to U.S. technology. Moreover,

the North’s largest trading partners, China and South Korea, are opposed to pressure tactics.

Wise handling of this evolving North Korean challenge must therefore rely on diplomacy.

We must make every effort to convince North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-il that his

pursuit of nuclear weapons makes him less secure, not more secure. We must try

to convince him that if North Korea behaves responsibly, it will find true peace on

the Korean Peninsula, and its people will enjoy the benefits of that peace.

That’s going to be a tough sell.

The Bush Administration has basically pursued a policy of malign neglect of

North Korea for the past two years. Its failure to articulate a clear, consistent Korea

policy, its skepticism of President Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy, and its gratuitous rhetorical broadsides against Kim Jong-il and the North Korean state, all have

diminished the prospects for a diplomatic solution.

North Korea is responsible for this crisis, but we are responsible for doing everything we can to find a way out of it. If we fail, all of us will have to deal with the

repercussions, perhaps for generations to come.

So what should we do? There is still time for the Administration to adopt the core

elements of the North Korea policy drafted by a working group led by Deputy Secretary Armitage back in 1999. In addition to our lead witness today, that group included current Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Brookes, and current Assistant Secretary of Intelligence and Research Carl Ford, among others.

Mr. Secretary, your report called for a policy of hard-headed engagement developed in close coordination with our allies and backed by a credible threat of military

force—much like the Perry Initiative.

I highly commend the Armitage report to my colleagues who are struggling, as

I am, to figure out how we got into this mess and how we might still get out of

it. Let me quote a few of the reports key suggestions to spark discussion:

• ‘‘Regain the diplomatic initiative. U.S. policy toward North Korea has become

largely reactive and predictable, with U.S. diplomacy characterized by a cycle

of North Korean provocation (or demand) and American response.’’

Good idea. But even now the Bush Administration claims the ball is in North Korea’s court. North Korea says it is in our court. From where I sit, the ball is stuck

in the net and somebody better go get it

• ‘‘A new approach must treat the Agreed Framework as the beginning of a policy

toward North Korea, not as the end of the problem. It should clearly formulate

answers to two key questions: first, what precisely do we want from North

Korea, and what price are we prepared to pay for it? Second, are we prepared

to take a different course if, after exhausting all reasonable diplomatic efforts,

we conclude that no worthwhile accord is possible?’’

Great questions. But the Administration hasn’t answered them yet.

• ‘‘A U.S. point person should be designated by the President in consultation with

Congressional leaders and should report directly to the President.’’

Another good idea. But President Bush down-graded the special envoy position

and had him report to the Secretary of State, thereby assuring that we could not

gain access to Kim Jong-il—the only man in North Korea who has the authority to

cut a deal.

• ‘‘Offer Pyongyang clear choices in regard to its future: on the one hand, economic benefits, security assurances, political legitimization, on the other, the

23

certainty of enhanced military deterrence. For the United States and its allies,

the package as a whole means that we are prepared—if Pyongyang meets our concerns—to accept North Korea as a legitimate actor, up to and including full

normalization of relations.’’

Good idea, but the Bush Administration has made clear that it considers North

Korea to be part of an ‘‘Axis of Evil,’’ and has all but ruled out normalizing relations.

• ‘‘The notion that buying time works in our favor is increasingly dubious.’’

How prophetic this was in 1999! How then, do we explain the Administration’s muted response to the world’s worst proliferator taking concrete steps that could

permit it to build a nuclear arsenal? We can’t afford to put this problem on the back

burner.

If we do all of these things, will it work? Will the North change course? I don’t

know. It’s impossible to know for sure until we try.

As we move ahead, I’m very concerned that the Administration has not done an

adequate job communicating critical information to Congress. Consider what we

have learned over the past few days thanks to the New York Times and The Washington Post—and no thanks, as far as I can tell, to briefings from the Administration.

On Friday, the Times reported and the Administration confirmed that the U.S.

Government has evidence that North Korea is moving its stockpile of nuclear fuel

rods out of storage, potentially in an effort to produce additional nuclear weapons.

Asked why the Administration had not revealed this information, unnamed senior

administration officials told the Times it is because the Administration wants to

avoid a crisis atmosphere and avoid distracting international attention from Iraq.

On Saturday, the Post reported that the Administration knew in November, 2001,

that North Korea had begun construction of a uranium enrichment plant and that

key information was coming from Pakistan. Yet the Administration did not brief

Congress or confront North Korea with this information until nearly a year later.

Our witnesses today have vast experience with the challenge posed by North Ko- rea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. I look forward to their sage advice at this difficult

hour.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Biden.

Senator Allen.

Senator ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Secretary

Armitage, again, for appearing here and giving us your perspective.

Mr. Chairman, I want to associate myself with your remarks and

comments as far as the refugees from North Korea. The United

States is a country that has always been on the side of people escaping for freedom and finding a way to do it. And I know the Secretary has personal experience in that regard.

This, Mr. Secretary, is a time of much concern across America

and all around the world. Today we’re commemorating the lives

lost on the Columbia and continuing to comfort the families, and

we’ll be making strategic decisions regarding NASA. We’re continuing a war on terrorism, in Afghanistan, specifically. Your office

and Secretary Powell are pursuing action to disarm Saddam Hussein, who clearly does possess weapons of mass destruction, specifically in the form of biological and chemical weapons, as well as

missile capabilities, or trying to develop the missile capabilities to

deliver weapons of mass destruction. As well as their association

with terrorism.

Then we focus here in this hearing on North Korea, a country

that clearly has chemical weapons, has biological weapons, clearly

has developed nuclear capabilities as well as the missile capabilities to hit U.S. interests and those of our allies.

The point is not that you just focus on one or the other on all

these different things. We don’t have to be standing there without

actions. We need to make specific plans that are specific to the

24

challenge or the danger to our country and our interests. And I

think that you’re showing that capacity and capability, and I know

that the Senate has the ability to focus on more than one crisis or

one challenge.

In these tactics or challenges as we face North Korea, these are

not issues of first impression. The 1994 Agreed Framework negotiations with North Korea, the United States agreed to finance and

supply North Korea with the two light-water reactors in exchange

for internationally monitored freezes and dismantling of their nuclear infrastructure, as I understand it. But notably absent from

this agreement was any restriction on North Korea’s proliferation

activity. And we’ve mentioned here that North Korea, seemingly

freely—has transferred ballistic missile technology to belligerent,

dangerous countries such as Iran, Syria, Libya and Yemen. And, in

fact, the Defense Department’s January 2001 report or publication,

‘‘Proliferation Threat and Response,’’ characterize North Korea as

a major proliferator of ballistic missiles and related technologies

and warned that the sale of No Dong missile technology to Iran has

created an immediate, serious, and growing capability to target

U.S. forces and our allies in the Middle East.

Now, this clearly is a grave danger to the United States and our

allies. And given our President’s commitment to resolve the current

standoff with North Korea through diplomatic means, will you assure us that the United States will include the suspension of North

Korean missile sales in any negotiated agreement that it has

reached?

And, followup question to that, what are we doing, in concrete

tangible steps, to the extent that you can share that with us, to

make sure that this proliferation of missile technology and nuclear

capabilities is not transferred to belligerents elsewhere?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Senator, a slight tweak, if I may, on your opening

comments. In the 1994 Agreed Framework, you are correct that in

the opening paragraph, in fact, in the opening sentence, we commit

ourselves and the DPRK commits themselves, to negotiate an overall resolution of the nuclear issue on the Korean Peninsula. It does

not mention missiles. However, we did not commit to fund the

light-water reactors. We committed to form a consortium. And

South Korea pays approximately 70 percent, Japan pays about 22

percent, and there is an 8 percent funding gap in the light-water

reactors.

We did commit to fund heavy fuel oil, sir, which was estimated

to be what would replace the energy development at that Yongbyon

reactor.

Senator ALLEN. Nevertheless, we allowed it to go forward, and

we were complicit in it.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Well, I am just trying to lay out the facts Senator. I do not want to confuse the issue.

Senator ALLEN. Right.

Mr. ARMITAGE. I mean, whether we fund the light-water reactors—I think there is some confusion on Capitol Hill about that—

and we don’t.

Senator ALLEN. OK.

Mr. ARMITAGE. And we haven’t.

25

Senator, on the question of missiles, the whole essence of the socalled bold approach that Mr. Kelly was going to present not only

tried to encompass the remaining nuclear issues and the missile

area, but the conventional area and human rights on the peninsula. That was the essence of our approach for the bold approach,

to try to wrap them all up. Because, as I indicated earlier, if you’re

threatened from a nuclear weapon or you’re threatened from approximately 11,000 tubes of artillery forward-deployed, you’re

threatened in the same way. You’re going to die if the bubble goes

up. So we wanted to encapsulate all our concerns with North

Korea, and that’s what Jim Kelly was sent to do. And, on the way

to Pyongyang, it was derailed by the revelations about the HEU.

I can assure you that we’re not going to try to let that slip again.

I’m not making a criticism of the previous administration. They

went after the nuclear issue, and, as I’ve indicated, they made a

difference for a number of years in the weapons that could be available to Pyongyang.

On the proliferation of which I’m aware of, North Korea is primarily missile. There has been nuclear technology, but it’s primarily missile. We stop it where we can, and they are not party

to the MTCR. We sanction individual companies, which we’ve done

in North Korea, and to recipients, and we continue, where possible,

to break the linkages between certain countries and North Korea,

whether it’s just on Scud missiles or on any other development.

And we can—and I’m happy to provide, in a classified provision, to

the members, a list of, country by country, where we’ve done this.

[A classified response was subsequently received.]

Senator ALLEN. Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, Mr. Allen.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Allen.

Some members have arrived, some have left, since we began the

hearing. Let me just indicate that Secretary Armitage will be leaving us at about 11:15. Therefore the Chair, and now with the concurrence of the ranking member, has declared a 5-minute question

time for each member, and each is being recognized in order of seniority. I mention that because of, well, fairness issues and timeliness issues.

And I want to call now on Senator Sarbanes.

Senator SARBANES. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Mr.

Secretary, welcome.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Good morning, sir.

Senator SARBANES. What am I to make of this story in the Washington Post this morning with the headline, ‘‘U.S. Bombers Put On

Alert For Deployment In Pacific’’?

Mr. ARMITAGE. That’s a prudent military planning procedure,

and as far as I know, nothing has moved forward. It’s an alert to

be available to move forward.

Senator SARBANES. And what is the event it’s designed to address?

Mr. ARMITAGE. A contingency that North Korea would, in some

fashion, try to take advantage of our focus on Iraq, Senator.

Senator SARBANES. What is the nature of the advantage you

would anticipate they might try to take?

26

Mr. ARMITAGE. My understanding of this is that Admiral Fargo

has requested this and has not further specified whether it would

be conventional. We think it probably would. But we have no further information. It’s just prudent military planning.

Senator SARBANES. This would be a move against South Korea?

Mr. ARMITAGE. If he moved against South Korea.

Senator SARBANES. Is that what your answer——

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, or other interests, like Japan. That’s right.

Senator SARBANES. Now, what’s the view of the South Koreans

on this issue, on the Korean Peninsula and the conduct of North

Korea?

Mr. ARMITAGE. I think, given the fact that they were so rebuffed

recently, that there is some real soul searching going in Seoul

about just how to handle the North Korean situation we have. The

envoy of the President-elect Roh, who met with the Secretary a few

minutes ago, and he met with—he’s meeting with—the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense. And I can’t give you his reaction, but I know the editorial opinion in Seoul.

Senator SARBANES. Which is what?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Which has been that South Korea was rebuffed,

and it’s an embarrassment to the Republic of Korean Government,

and that North Korea is not playing fair at all after all the efforts

that the previous government and administration had put forward

to try to resolve the North/South issues.

Senator SARBANES. Have the South Koreans indicated to us what

approach or course they would like to see the United States follow

as we deal with the North Korean situation?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes. Generally, they have said they want us to

talk to the North Koreans directly. We have agreed with them, and

it is a question of when we’re going to do it and how.

Senator SARBANES. And how long have we been agreed on the notion that we will talk to them?

Mr. ARMITAGE. For at least a month, perhaps more, we have indicated to the South Koreans that we will talk to them, once we’re

sure of our international base. And we are still, as I answered earlier, sir, trying to not have this become simply a bilateral issue.

There are several nations in the world that have real interest

there, including two great powers, China and Russia.

Senator SARBANES. Well, this assurance of the international base

leads me to the next headline that’s in this morning’s paper. It

says, ‘‘China’s Reluctance Irks U.S., Beijing Shows No Inclination

To Intervene in North Korea Crisis.’’ What’s the situation there?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Secretary Powell will be meeting with Foreign

Minister Tang of China this afternoon in New York. I think it’s a

fair description of their, sort of, schizophrenic approach to North

Korea. They are very unhappy with the possibility of nuclear developments on the peninsula. They are also, they tell us, quite aware

of the North Korean paranoia, and they treat things very gingerly.

It’s very instructive to look at the Korean war period, and particularly Chinese assistance to the North Koreans, where Chinese

veterans or Chinese military, the People’s Army, in my view, saved

the situation for North Korea, and then the Chinese were treated

just horribly immediately thereafter by the North Koreans, and it’s

27

something that China has never come to grips with, and they are

quite schizophrenic about.

Senator SARBANES. Well, they are providing considerable support

to North Korea, are they not?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, sir. It’s about half, I think, of their foreignaid budget goes to North Korea.

Senator SARBANES. Now, before my time expires, let me exhaust

the other headline in this morning’s paper, ‘‘North Korea Said To

See Opportunity In Iraq Crisis.’’ That’s the headline, and it reads, ‘‘North Korea, convinced that the United States is distracted by the

prospect of war with Iraq, is attempting to convert the situation

into an opportunity to force long-sought negotiations by intensifying its nuclear weapons standoff with Washington.’’ Is that how

you see that situation?

Mr. ARMITAGE. I think that’s a fair assumption, and I tried to

refer to in my answer to your question about military alert orders,

sir.

Senator SARBANES. Would you regard the threat posed by North

Korea as greater than the threat posed by Iraq?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Not at this point, I would not. It was—potentially, it could be a very serious threat, particularly the threat of

proliferation.

The reason I do not see it in the same regard, Senator Sarbanes,

is because there has been a rough stability on the peninsula of

Korea, for 50 years, as unpleasant as that has been and as much

sacrifice as that has meant in South Korean coffers and our own,

that’s quite a dramatically different situation from Iraq, sir.

Senator SARBANES. But it must have affected our thinking in

that regard when Ambassador Kelly got in effect, that outright

challenge when he went to North Korea in October, did it not?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, we realized we were dealing with a problem,

a big problem.

Senator SARBANES. A big problem.

Mr. ARMITAGE. A big problem.

Senator SARBANES. Would you label it a ‘‘crisis’’?

Mr. ARMITAGE. No, I wouldn’t, Senator, and I spoke earlier about

that. And the reason I wouldn’t label it a ‘‘crisis,’’ I think we have

got some time to work this. We have been working it for several

months, not 12 years, like in Iraq. It could develop into a crisis, but

it’s not there now.

Senator SARBANES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Sarbanes.

Senator Alexander.

Senator ALEXANDER. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, Senator.

Senator ALEXANDER. We’ve been talking about this big problem,

mostly in terms of the direct effect of a North Korean attack or action against someone else. I’d like to ask you to help us understand, in a little different context this morning, the long-term effect

of nuclear arms in North Korea on all of Asia. I mean, some of it,

I suppose, is obvious.

What does North Korea have to do to cause Japan to change its

attitude about nuclear weapons, for example? And if Japan were

then to change its attitude about nuclear weapons, most of us can

28

imagine how the rest of Asia might feel, and then China would

take, possibly, further steps. There would be increased pressure on

the United States in connection with Taiwan. You mentioned Taiwan a little earlier.

So it seems to me that this big problem that we’re talking about

is perhaps not as big a problem as the long-term possibility of a

domino game that would turn into an Asian arms race. And how

are you evaluating that as you think about how to deal with this

big problem?

Mr. ARMITAGE. In 1981, sir, the United States and Japan decided

on a roles-and-missions approach to our bilateral alliance, and in

that roles-and-missions approach, it was the United States who

took responsibility for the nuclear umbrella over Japan.

And my view is that as long as the United States continues to

provide the nuclear umbrella, Japan will not arm in a nuclear fashion. If, however, Japan begins to question our affection or our alliance, then it would lead to the rather destabilizing situation to

which you refer.

I believe that the arms race in North Korea pales next to the

possibility of proliferation, which is our major fear, from North

Korea, that she would pass on fissile material and other nuclear

technology to either transnational actors or to rogue states.

Senator ALEXANDER. In the same kind of domino-game connection, we haven’t talked this morning about our troops in South

Korea. And how does the big problem in North Korea affect the

long-term planning of the American presence in South Korea? Because what happens there seems to make more difference in other

countries than it might make in Korea itself.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, Senator, it refers back, I think, to the, sort

of, spike in anti-Americanism that exists. I know that Secretary

Rumsfeld and his colleagues are reviewing our troop presence, not

so much with an idea to moving them out of South Korea, but perhaps to reconfiguring them and perhaps moving them out of the

capital a bit to, sort of, lower the profile. But that’s a work in

progress that will take place with the Korean Government and

with the Government of Japan’s witting accomplice and knowledge.

If I may, I want to take the opportunity to point out that we

often talk about the 37,000 U.S. forces that are in Seoul. We talk,

much less, about the 30,000 businessmen, Americans who are

mainly in Seoul, but not entirely, or the average of 44,000 American tourists. And so, year by year, American visitors to Seoul,

month to month, go from 20,000 to a high of 66,000. So we are really talking about citizens of the United States in Seoul of about

120,000 to 140,000 people. So we have got a huge investment.

And that brings into play what our former colleague, General

Tilelli, calls the ‘‘tyranny of proximity,’’ proximity to the DMZ in

the forward-deployed forces.

Senator ALEXANDER. Very quickly, you’ve mentioned anti-Americanism. As we look at South Korea and that phenomenon and Europe in connection with Iraq today, do you see any echoes of Europe in the early 1980s as we put nuclear-tipped weapons there

and the intense anti-American feeling that seemed to develop there

because of our forwardness in facing a threat?

29

Mr. ARMITAGE. I think there is a little bit of difference. I am not

sure I am qualified—I am not a Europeanist, but I know that the

more recent reason for the spike in North Korea—or South Korea,

excuse me, sir—has to do with the generational change, the fact

that we had that terrible event where two young schoolgirls were

run over by U.S. military equipment—and to the South Korean

mind, there was not sufficient punishment meted out in that regard; no one ‘‘took responsibility,’’ to use the Asian phrase—and it

also, I think, reflects a frustration that the South is having in dealing with the North.

And, finally, what I referred to earlier, a country of almost 50

million people who’s got the tenth largest economy in the world is

a little frustrated in having others play, in my words, ‘‘basketball

over their heads,’’ making decisions that really affect them and

that they’re not fully and totally a part of, and I indicated we’ve

got to do a better job in that regard.

Senator ALEXANDER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Alexander.

Senator Dodd.

Senator DODD. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Let me

thank you once again for holding these, what are very important

hearings, and the agenda you’re got is a very, very good one.

I’d just like to ask quickly, if I could—the last time we had before, Mr. Secretary—and I appreciate your being here today——

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, sir.

Senator DODD [continuing]. I raised the question of whether or

not we might hear from Secretary Powell prior to his appearance

tomorrow before the United Nations so that we would at least be

aware, and maybe in a closed-door session so as not to get into the

sources-and-methods issues. I wonder, Mr. Chairman, if you might

comment on what the situation is regarding that briefing?

The CHAIRMAN. Well, certainly, those requests, including my

own, were conveyed to the Secretary. A decision was made that the

Secretary will brief the chairman, me, Senator Biden, the ranking

member, our counterparts in the House committee, and leadership

of the Senate, ten Members of the Congress and the House in all,

at 7 o’clock tomorrow morning at the White House before Secretary

Powell flies to the United Nations.

Mr. ARMITAGE. If I may, Mr. Chairman, my understanding is a

little bit different. Mr. Powell is going to New York to meet with

Foreign Minister Tang and Foreign Minister Ivanov today, and my

understanding is the President and Dr. Rice are going to hold that

briefing for the leadership, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Secretary Powell will, in fact, be in New York,

but the President will conduct the briefing?

Mr. ARMITAGE. That is correct. That is my understanding, sir.

Senator DODD. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I—let me

just, once again, express that I appreciate the chairman’s efforts,

who, as early as last week, indicated he strongly felt that we

should hear from the Secretary prior to the presentation. And I appreciate the time constraints and the pressures the administration

is under. And my only purpose in raising the question, as you

know, is just that I felt, since many of us here need to answer

questions we’re getting ourselves, that, in addition to briefing world

30

leaders, that Members of Congress ought to be fully briefed, as

well, as to what facts and information they’re going to use to support the administration’s position regarding Iraq. And I will just

express my disappointment that we’re not going to have that

chance before the presentation tomorrow. But possibly the meeting

with the President may help, Mr. Chairman, in that regard in the

morning, and I look forward to the briefing from the Chairs of the

committee.

Let me, if I can, quickly turn—I’d just like to pick up on Senator

Sarbanes’ point here. The question he raised about how you

prioritize—and this is not just an academic exercise, because obviously resources and attention are going to be important. And,

again, I’ll restate the obvious here, at least for my part. That is

that I think Iraq does pose serious threats. I’ve felt that from the

very beginning, felt it for a long time. I don’t retreat at all from

that position.

But as we try to compare the immediacy of these threats, I look

at Iraq and where it is in its accumulation of weapons of mass destruction, and I look at where North Korea is, and I see North

Korea, where it’s expelled the IAEA inspectors, it’s done all the

necessary preparations for a nuclear facility—and you’re nodding

your head in agreement with this.

As of this morning, the North Koreans may have already begun,

once again, to reprocess plutonium. The North Koreans may well

be on their way to building additional nuclear weapons to destabilize the region. We know that they posses nuclear and chemical

weapons. And North Korea has one of the worst records when it

comes to selling ballistic weapons to other governments.

How do you draw the conclusion—and I, by the way, to the best

of my knowledge, while Iraq may have some of these, or we’ve all

at least been told that the nuclear arsenal is—might—may exist,

but the ability to deliver is some time away, and there’s no record,

that I know of, of them selling. Now, at least there may be some

the Secretary’s going to present tomorrow. But if you start comparing these two records—and I acknowledge the threat posed by

Iraq, and yet nothing like this or similar to this, with regard to

Iraq, has made accusations. How do you draw the conclusion that

the North Korean problem is not a more serious crisis than Iraq?

Mr. ARMITAGE. For several reasons you may, in fact, and I suspect you will disagree with. One has to do with how long we’ve

been working diplomatically to try to resolve the North Korean situation, months rather than years, as in Iraq. Second, that although

it’s been unpleasant, there’s been a rough regional stability with

North Korea that has not existed with Iraq, who has invaded her

neighbors twice. Third, we do believe we have an understanding of

what Kim Jong Il is after, and that is some sort of economic relief

and assistance, vice Saddam Hussein, and we believe that is not

at all his motivation; it’s domination, intimidation, and the ability

to attack.

On the question of proliferation, you’re right. I don’t think that

Saddam Hussein has been a major proliferator. Our fear has been,

as we’ve tried to explain, the nexus of his weapons, his bloodymindedness, and terrorists, some of which, as I indicated last week,

Senator, the Secretary will lay out tomorrow.

31

But that is not the major presentation of Secretary Powell tomorrow. His major presentation, as I stated, is to try to fill in the

blanks in why Dr. Blix said what he said, and denial, deception,

and things of that nature.

Senator DODD. Let me ask this on a—there’s a couple of very

specific questions, but let me get the question out, so it isn’t just

one question.

The Bush administration undertook a review of the U.S. policy

toward Korea shortly after it assumed office. I’d like to know, sort

of, when that review was completed. And following that review,

didn’t the State Department hold out the possibility of talks with

North Korea as early as June of 2001?

The reason I raise that with you, because it was a year-and-ahalf later, almost a year-and-a-half later, when Mr. Kelly went to

North Korea, and I am curious that had the North Koreans not announced during that visit—and maybe I should ask Mr. Kelly. I

don’t know if he’s going to be talking here or not. I’ve got, sort of,

questions for you, but I’m asking Mr. Armitage.

What if that announcement had not been made in North Korea?

What was the intention of the administration as a result of your

review—why did it take so long, a year-and-a-half almost, to then

go? And then had they not made this announcement—what was

the point of your visit? I mean, you could have found out the answer to the question of whether or not they were already going to

break these early agreements without having to travel to North

Korea, so I presume the visit in October of last year had more significance than just merely going to be told something that we probably were aware of already.

Mr. ARMITAGE. The review of Korea policy was completed in June

2001, Senator, and, almost immediately, the Secretary of State indicated that we’re ready to sit down and talk with the North Koreans. It took them, by my recollection, until April 2002 to come forward and say they wanted to meet. Secretary Powell then met at

Brunei with the DPRK Foreign Minister and—to set the groundwork for Mr. Kelly’s subsequent visit.

It was about a month or so in front of Mr. Kelly’s visit to

Pyongyang that we got what we felt was incontrovertible evidence

of a production program of highly enriched uranium, which very

much changed his presentation.

Mr. KELLY. I would just add, Senator, that in July—or, rather,

June 29, 2002, there was a naval shootout in the Yellow Sea to the

west of the Korean Peninsula, and so that interrupted the prospect

of talks for a month or a month-and-a-half, so that most of the period of time between the President’s announcement of June 6, 2001

and when I went to Pyongyang on October 3, 2002 was because the

North Koreans weren’t ready to receive a group.

When I did go in October, it was to both describe the bold approach that the President had approved, but also to note, with sadness and in privacy and confidentially, that we knew that North

Korea had this uranium enrichment program going on covertly and

that we hoped that they would find some way to end it, because

this was a very serious impediment to all the things that we felt

that we could begin to do with North Korea.

Senator DODD. Mr. Chairman, my time is up.

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The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Dodd.

Senator Sununu.

Senator SUNUNU. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Secretary Armitage, I want to begin by just getting a little clarity

on missile capacity, the ability to launch ballistic missiles. Could

you comment on the current range of the North Korean’s missile

technology and what the implications are for neighboring countries?

And then, second, what’s your best thinking right now as to the

next generation of missile and how much additional range that will

give the North Koreans?

Mr. ARMITAGE. There are, in an unclassified session, primarily

three missiles, Scud missiles, which are well known, and we believe

there are approximately 500 in their inventory; No Dong missiles,

which have, we believe, about a 1300-kilometer range, so you can

draw that arc, and that’s the longest-range ballistic missile that

North Korea has deployed; and then there’s the Taepo Dong, which

is a multiple-staged ballistic missile that may actually be capable—

may be capable—of reaching some portions of the United States.

Senator SUNUNU. And I imagine this also causes concern among

the Pacific rim neighbors, whether it’s China, Taiwan, going so far

south as Indonesia. And are you equally concerned about the proliferation of this technology as you are about the nuclear technology, or is this a genie out of a bottle?

Mr. ARMITAGE. First of all, our major concern in this regard is

Japan, where we have such a heavily invested relationship across

the full range of cultural, political, economic, and military aspects.

But it is—the missiles have been—the whole problem of missile

proliferation has been one of the major intersections of U.S. policy

for successive administrations, and we’ve spent a considerable

amount of time trying to subvert, interrupt, stop, and jawbone people out of these type relationships with North Korea, with varying

amounts of success, sometimes quite successfully.

Senator SUNUNU. I want to come back to the issue of proliferation and cooperation on proliferation. But first, while you underscore that that’s our greatest concern right now, our national security concern here, and I would hope the concern of other countries

in the region, that’s what makes it a multilateral problem. That’s

what makes it the world’s problem, not just the United States’ problem, is the proliferation of—the nuclear technology, the proliferation of ballistic missile technology. But from the perspective

of those in the Pacific rim themselves, do you believe they’re more

concerned about proliferation, or are they more concerned about a

nuclear weapon changing the strategic profile of neighboring countries?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Clearly, Japan is more concerned about the latter, changing the profile. I think the Russian and the Chinese attitudes are slightly different. The last thing they want is this paranoid, difficult neighbor which borders them to be involved in a contretemps with the United States, or, at worst, some sort of military

conflict which might ultimately end up with U.S. forces 25 or 30

kilometers from their border. Now, I’m not suggesting that at all,

and let me reiterate that diplomacy is the preferred option, but it’s

that specter in the back of the mind, I think, of Chinese and RusVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:38 May 07, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00036 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 85795 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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sian political leadership types that really bothers them. They’re not

as concerned about proliferation.

Senator SUNUNU. Well, speaking of Russia and China, specifically, and the issue of the proliferation of ballistic missile technology, do you believe that those two countries have truly been

helpful in dealing with this area of proliferation, or to what extent

have they provided dual-use technology to North Korea that’s made

dealing with ballistic missile proliferation more difficult?

Mr. ARMITAGE. If I may, Senator, that’s, sort of, two different

questions. On the first half, generally, because of fears of difficulty

with the United States, China and Russia have attempted to be

helpful. Dual-use technology, however, comes from a variety of

sources and is not limited at all, because of the dual-use nature,

to Russia and China. There are many, many countries who have

been involved—Germany, for instance.

Senator SUNUNU. Have we been successful in placing any limitations or encouraging our allies to put limitations on the technology

that’s provided that might fall into the dual-use category, either for

ballistic missiles or for nuclear?

Mr. ARMITAGE. We have, indeed, when we catch folks involved in

this. And it’s primarily a matter of intelligence giving us information on who’s doing this, and then we try, through diplomatic

means, to stop the transaction.

Senator SUNUNU. So those limitations are already in place——

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes.

Senator SUNUNU [continuing]. But they’re being violated, you believe, in Germany, they’re being violated in Russia—— Mr. ARMITAGE. No, I mean——

Senator SUNUNU [continuing]. They’re being violated by the Chinese?

Mr. ARMITAGE. Well, our dual-use concerns, I’m saying there are

many, many countries who have been involved in the provision of

dual-use equipment. And, of course, by its very nature, it can be

used for a very benign situation or it can be used for a less benign.

And in some of the cases, we’ve found, they’re—the end users are

listed as a benign end user, but, indeed, they’re subverted and converted to military use.

Senator SUNUNU. But the question on my mind would be whether dual-use technologies are being provided in violation of agreements that we might have with Germany. Germany was the example that you gave.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, I do not believe so, Senator.

Senator SUNUNU. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Sununu.

Senator Rockefeller.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. I would yield to Senator Corzine.

The CHAIRMAN. We’ll go momentarily to Senator Corzine, then

back to Senator Rockefeller.

Senator CORZINE. Thank you, Senator Rockefeller. And I appreciate, Mr. Chairman, this hearing and the Secretary’s testimony.

I want to return to a line of questioning that was asked earlier

about the February 1 ‘‘Nuclear Plans Were Held Secret’’ that was

in the Washington Post, and I want to restate—re-ask the quesVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:38 May 07, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00037 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 85795 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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tion. You are saying the Livermore report was not delivered to the

White House and was not exposed to the administration?

Mr. ARMITAGE. No, I didn’t say anything about the White House,

sir. I said that it was not delivered to me. And my understanding,

after investigating over the last couple of days, was that the Livermore effort was part of a more general gathering of intelligence for

the Energy Department, and it was primarily, if not exclusively,

limited to the R&D program, which we and the previous administration had some concerns about.

Let me hasten to add that I’m not going to hang my hat on that,

because I only know what I know, and that’s what I’ve found out

thus far. And if there’s a change in that, I’ll certainly get back to

the committee.

Senator CORZINE. When we were in the midst of debating the

use-of-force resolution with respect to Iraq, was the information, as

I’m led to believe, with regard to the efforts to produce—or reprocess spent uranium, was that known? And was that a concern to the

administration in the kind of context that you talk about, prudent

military alert, today on the Korean Peninsula, in light of the Yemeni’s shipment of missiles, in light of the battle that was spoken

about in the west of the peninsula? Why wasn’t that information

useful or at least an important element with respect to our debates

on what our priorities should be?

And since the information was available, I’m concerned and troubled by not having that as part of the considerations we take into

account when we’re facing major issues about allocation of military

resources.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Senator, the information about the production

program of HEU was available in a memo to consumers. It was

briefed, according to what the CIA tells me, to the Intelligence

Committee. I know Jim Kelly—I had some conversations with some

of the members of this committee immediately after Jim’s trip to

Pyongyang, and Jim—and I have met a whole host of contacts he

had with members of the staff of this committee, and others,

where—we made it very clear our view of the status of the HEU

production program and what we had heard in Pyongyang. It was

prior to your consideration of House Joint Resolution 114.

Senator CORZINE. That’s certainly a limited number, but not, certainly, all of the Senate, I would presume.

Mr. ARMITAGE. No, I don’t believe all the Senate, but it’s quite

a full list of staff and members who were briefed either by me, Mr.

Kelly, or others, sir.

Senator CORZINE. Could you comment on a statement by, I believe, Mr. Bolton, with regard to North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons, that they’re using utmost efforts to produce chemical weapons, has one of the most robust offensive bio-weapons programs on earth, and how we feel about that as a risk to the United

States, since North Korea has shown its proclivity for proliferation?

And how do we compare that with the risks that are associated

with Iraq?

Mr. ARMITAGE. We do believe that they—the North Koreans have

both a robust biological program as well as a chemical program. We

do not have good information about the weaponization of those programs. We have a real gap in our knowledge.

35

North Korea is a signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention

and not to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and I’ve just exhausted the sum total of my knowledge of that subject, sir.

Senator CORZINE. I would repeat one of the, sort of, framing of

questions that I mentioned to you last week. Disarming weapons

of mass destruction seems to be one of our policy objectives in Iraq.

Proliferation is one of our policy—or stopping proliferation is one

of our policies that we are espousing in Iraq. Efficacy of the United

Nations in international agreements under a law is one of those

connections to terrorists. One at least has a reason to question why

the analysis on one doesn’t fit with the other and where our priorities are.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Sir, with all due respect, I think the only difference we have between the Iraq situation and the North Korea

situation has to do with the nexus of terrorists and terrorism,

where it’s much more pronounced in the Iraq situation than it is

in North Korea.

It is true, quite true, that North Korea is on the terrorist list.

And the reason that they’re on the terrorist list is because they

have not provided or given up the Red Army faction who has been

hiding in Pyongyang—we have, and the international community

has a lot of questions about that in the unique and very tragic situation of the abductees from Japan.

But in terms of the rest of it, I think there’s perfect analogy—

indeed, to include the United Nations—because if we have the

IAEA Board meeting on the 12th of February, as it is scheduled,

that Board will then report to the Security Council their findings.

So it’s following a very similar track to the question of Iraq, thus

far.

Senator CORZINE. Proliferation to Iran, as Senator Allen spoke

about in his question, and Iran’s connections with other terrorist

organizations, transnational organizations, certainly would lead

one to infer that there may be greater risks.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Yes, sir.

Senator CORZINE. Thank you.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Senator Corzine.

Senator Rockefeller.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Welcome, Mr.

Secretary.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, sir.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. It’s been posited a bit that the Korean situation is disturbing, troubling, not necessarily a crisis. I look at—

you look back at what happened in 1994, when Kim Il Sung—two

extraordinary things—one, actually, he turned to his wife and said,

‘‘What do you think about the MIAs,’’ and she said, ‘‘I think you

ought to do it,’’ and he said, ‘‘It’s done.’’ Now, that was some time

ago.

In the meantime, things have gotten a lot worse in Korea, economically—North Korea—and you know, the reports are that soldiers coming back from—that are seen by our people, the South Koreans, may be 100, 115 pounds, kids are half the size of what they

ought to be—and that the system is generally breaking down. Now,

you know, that’s been said.

36

From that, you then have to compare the mind of Kim Il Sung

to Kim Jong Il, and that we can’t do very well, because we don’t

have, presumably, the assets on the ground to be able to penetrate

that kind of thinking.

I always think it’s the better part of wisdom to assume that he’s

desperate. Why wouldn’t he be? He has the United States putting

him on the ‘‘axis of evil.’’ He has pressures from all around. He has

a fading economy. He is in his 60s; he has a legacy to worry about.

He’s not in touch with the rest of the world, watches CNN, video,

et cetera, but that really doesn’t help the influence that his military brings upon him.

And so my general approach would be that if—would be to start

out—that it’s safest, from the United States’ foreign policy, to start

out by assuming that this is a real crisis, which you said it was.

You used the word ‘‘crisis.’’ Why not?

In other words, if the fuel rods are moved, and if they’re moved

by truck, we won’t detect it—who knows where they’ll go. That

could be happening as we talk. It could be happening in the next

two or three things.

So, two things. One is, time is not on our side. We may have a

very, very short time window if Kim Jong Il is in a certain state

of mind, he feels threatened, rebuffs the South Korean Foreign

Minister for whatever reason, and, you know, the Chinese aren’t

putting a lot of pressure on him, nobody’s putting a lot of pressure

on him, such that we are, and he’s got the bomb. Now, that’s—Iraq

doesn’t have the bomb, at least as—reportedly. And he does. That’s

all he’s got. That’s all he’s got for his people. That’s all he’s got to

leverage for his people, what he desperately has always wanted.

And back in 1994, I think it was about $5 billion coming from

the South Koreans, the Japanese, and the European economic community; now it’s—and coming from the Japanese for previous

wrongdoings, and could be more. The prospect of a treaty with the

United States—I agree with Joe Biden, I think if the President said

this is important, if the American people began to understand,

which I think they could do pretty quickly, particularly if those fuel

rods are moved, the implications are well understood, that this

could develop very, very quickly, perhaps on the same time track

with Iraq, maybe just a little bit afterwards, but, anyway, very uncomfortably for the United States, not something to be put off.

So my instinct is always to try to open the box, make the box

larger, not smaller; give more opportunities, not fewer; take risks

of diplomacy, as opposed to, sort of, holding back and saying we’ll

just wait, or we won’t talk with them, or we won’t talk with them

unless they do such and such.

Now, if you held out an agreement, a peace treaty agreement,

with them—you ask them to verifiably stop what they are doing on

a nuclear basis—but they had all of this economic aid, world approval, a sudden change of their position, the status that perhaps

Kim Jong Il has sought all these years privately—we don’t know.

We don’t know what’s in the mind of either him or Hussein, in

some respects, two of the people that we know the least about.

Why is it not worth considering, sort of, a grander plan once

again? It might be rejected. On the other hand, in the offering of

37

it, we gain or we may cause him to think. And he needs the money,

and his people are starving, and that time is running out for him.

Mr. ARMITAGE. I think it is a very provocative and very worthwhile question. If I can, however, I want to set the stage a bit.

First of all, you are absolutely right, we have never seen what’s

theoretically impossible; that is, production of Marxist monarchy

which we have here, as Kim Il Sung morphed into Kim Jong Il. So

we’re dealing with a creature we haven’t had any experience with.

There is—and you would know from your Intelligence Committee

participation, sir—there’s a very interesting personality profile of

Kim Jong Il, and I call it to you and your colleagues’ attention.

Having said that, there is nothing wrong with considering the

bold approach again. But this is not something—first of all, to set

the stage again, when he, Kim Jong Il, was in the middle of his

economic reform package, which he thought, apparently, was going

to reap some benefits for his nation, he was also developing the

HEU at the same time a previous administration, in perfect good

faith, was trying to move forward with him.

So he is—I don’t gainsay that he is desperate right now, but part

of the desperation has been he has failed, he has been found out.

We know what he was up to. He was trying to have it both ways.

Now, having said—I’d like to set the stage there, at least for my

side—the question of whether to pursue a bold approach or not

again is certainly on the table. It is not something, however, that

an administration could do without setting a lot of groundwork in

motion, not the least of which is up here. Because at the end of the

day, there are real different views up here about the proper way

to move forward, at least as my telephone logs would show. We get

a lot of advice, all of it well-meaning, all of it sincere, but it’s not

in one direction or another.

You’ve offered a provocative question, which I think is a good

one, and it’s not one that the administration is going to push and

dismiss out of hand at all, seeing last year we were fully ready to

have Jim Kelly move forward on just that type of approach.

Senator ROCKEFELLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you,

Mr. Secretary.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you, Senator Rockefeller.

It is 11:15, and we appreciate very much your time, Mr. Secretary. Likewise, on Thursday. You were very generous for over 31⁄2

hours discussing Iraq. We look forward to your return.

Mr. ARMITAGE. It’s both our duty and an honor to be here, Senator, and I thank you.

Senator BIDEN. Mr. Chairman? Sorry, you go ahead and finish

up.

The CHAIRMAN. I would just say, parenthetically, that a comment

has been made about taking the temperature of Capitol Hill and

the Senate and our views, and I think that is important. Literally,

if the thought that our negotiations, in some way, are inhibited by

an informal vote count that the end result of this might not pass

muster, that’s a serious issue.

My guess is, listening at least to the 13 colleagues who have addressed you this morning, that we are very concerned about the

success of diplomacy, and specifically the diplomacy of our governVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:38 May 07, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00041 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 85795 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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ment and strongly backing what you and Secretary Kelly, others

who may be in the field, are attempting to do. So please stay closely in touch, as I know you always do.

But I just make this comment having at least caught the drift

that perhaps Capitol Hill was an obstacle to this. I think, for the

moment, we are intent upon seeing this as a very serious, very

dangerous problem, without arguing its equivalence with Iraq or

other issues, something that really has to be seized. And we appreciate your description of how you’re doing that.

Mr. ARMITAGE. May I add—well, I want to correct the record, but

I’d like to try to be a tiny bit more articulate on this. I agree with

you that an informal poll of Capitol Hill should not inhibit the development of good, sound policy, but I want to hasten to make it

clear that whatever course of action the administration finally sets

upon, it is incumbent upon us to be very much in lockstep with the

majority, and that takes—with Members of the Congress—and that

takes our willingness and ability to consult rigorously and throughout with you and your colleagues and on the House side, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. Very briefly, Mr. Chairman.

Back in the old days, when I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, after a couple of fairly high-profile hearings on the Supreme

Court a practice emerged whereby administrations, successive administrations, Democrat and Republican, I am told, would school

the prospective nominees on how to appear before a committee.

And they would watch tapes of how the committee, Judiciary Committee, functioned and witnesses before the committee, nominees,

and how they responded.

I respectfully suggest the administration should put out a tape

of how you respond to questions. It would be a very good measure

for the rest of the administration when they come and testify.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you much, Senator.

The CHAIRMAN. A high compliment, well deserved.

Mr. ARMITAGE. Thank you for you inspiration, sir.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much.

We call now upon our distinguished panel of Ashton Carter, Stephen Bosworth, and Donald Gregg to come to the witness table.

Gentlemen, we’re very pleased that you are with us today. Let

me introduce this panel more completely. And I will ask you to testify in the order that I introduce you and to please limit your initial testimony to 10 minutes, if possible, and then we’ll proceed

with questions of our Senate colleagues.

The first to testify will be the Honorable Ashton B. Carter, who

is now co-director of the Preventive Defense Project. He is former

Assistant Secretary of Defense, and professor of Science and International Affairs at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

And let me just say, as a point of personal privilege, Ash Carter

was instrumental in providing to Sam Nunn and to me and to

other Senators information with regard to Russian nuclear weapons, weapons of mass destruction, that formed the foundation for

our legislation that has become known as the Cooperative Threat

Reduction Program, and Ash Carter, himself, helped administrator

39

that program in the Defense Department. It’s a real privilege to

have him here before us today.

Our next witness will be the Honorable Stephen Bosworth, who

is now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts

University. He is the former United States Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, and, equally importantly, in my judgment, our

former Ambassador to the Philippines, and was the instrumental

official at the time of the Philippine election of 1986 in working

with Secretary Schultz, with the President of the United States,

and with the visiting American delegation that witnessed that election.

Let me say that our third witness—and he has temporarily left

us, but he will return, I suspect, shortly—is Donald Gregg, who is

president and chairman of the Korea Society. He is our former

United States Ambassador to the Republic of Korea and former Security Advisor to Vice President George Bush.

Gentlemen, we welcome you, and we look forward to your comments.

Secretary Carter.

STATEMENT OF HON. ASHTON B. CARTER, CO-DIRECTOR, PREVENTIVE DEFENSE PROJECT, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, PROFESSOR OF SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE,

MA

Dr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members. Mr. Chairman,

thank you for those kind words.

I would like to share my recollections of the previous two crises

involving North Korea, 1994, 1998, and some thoughts about the

crisis in which we find ourselves today.

I’m not an expert on North Korea. I’m fond of saying that there

are no real experts on North Korea. There are specialists, but the

specialists don’t have much expertise.

My knowledge of North Korea and Korean affairs came in, sort

of, seat-of-the-pants fashion when I was serving as an Assistant

Secretary of Defense in 1994, when, very similarly to now, North

Korea was preparing, at that time, to remove from the research reactor at Yongbyon, the fuel rods containing five or six bombs worth

of plutonium. The United States was trying to deal diplomatically

with that threat, but we were also, at that time, considering military options.

The then-Secretary of Defense, Bill Perry, ordered the preparation of a strike plan on Yongbyon, and we prepared a plan of that

sort, which we were very confident would be successful at destroying the research reactor, entombing the plutonium at Yongbyon,

destroying the reprocessing facilities and the other facilities there

with a strike of conventional precision air-delivered weapons. We

were, in fact, even confident that we could destroy an operating nuclear reactor of that kind while it was operating without creating

a Chernobyl-type radiological plume downwind, obviously an important consideration. Such a strike, had we carried it out, would

have effectively set back North Korea’s nuclear program many

years.

40

But while surgical in and of itself, the overall effect of a strike

of that kind would hardly have been surgical. The likely result of

that, or certainly a possible result of it, would have been the

unleashing over the DMZ of North Korea’s antiquated but very

large ground force, a barrage of artillery and missile fire on Seoul

and its suburbs.

We and our allies, South Korea and Japan, would very quickly,

in our estimation then, and I believe that’s still true now, within

weeks, have destroyed North Korea’s military and destroyed its regime. Of that, we were as confident as we were confident that we

could destroy Yongbyon in the first place.

But a war there would take place in the crowded suburbs of

Seoul, and the attendant intensity of violence and loss of life—ours,

South Korean, North Korean, combatant, noncombatant—would

have been greater than any the world has seen since the last Korean war and I think would shock the world with its violence and

intensity.

Fortunately, at that time—now, this is 1994—that war was

averted by the negotiation of the Agreed Framework. Now, the

Agreed Framework was controversial, it remains controversial, so

it’s important to know what it did and didn’t do.

What it did do was freeze operations at Yongbyon for 8 years,

until just a few weeks ago, verified by onsite inspection. The six

bombs worth of plutonium was not extracted from the fuel rods

then, and, for the subsequent 8 years, and no new plutonium was

created in the reactor during that period. Had the freeze not been

operating during that period, North Korea would have been able to

produce enough plutonium for an additional 50 nuclear weapons.

The Agreed Framework did not eliminate Yongbyon, but froze it.

In later phases of the agreement, Yongbyon was to be dismantled,

but we never got to those phases. Nor could or should the Agreed

Framework be said to have eliminated North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. For one thing, while the freeze was verified, there

was no adequate verification going on elsewhere in North Korea

that there wasn’t a Los Alamos-like laboratory preparing the other

wherewithal than fissile material required to make a nuclear weapon or a hidden—a uranium enrichment facility, which, as it turns

out, there was.

In addition—this was mentioned by Secretary Armitage—way

back in 1989, North Korea extracted plutonium from some fuel

rods. The amount’s unknown. It could be as much as two bombs

worth, as Secretary Armitage said. No one outside of North Korea

knows where that plutonium is or how much of it there is. No technical expert, nobody in the physics community, my community,

would doubt that North Korea has the intellectual wherewithal to

make a bomb or two out of it if it had it. And, therefore, it could

have a starter kit toward a nuclear arsenal. And, again, later

phases of the Agreed Framework called for North Korea to cough

this material up, but we never reached those later phases.

So from a threat perspective, the Agreed Framework produced a

profoundly important result for our security over 8 years, a thaw

that is disastrously—I mean, a freeze, which is disastrously thawing as we speak. But it was an incomplete result, as events 4 years

41

later—that is, 1998—would show. In that year, North Korea

launched a ballistic missile over Japan.

President Clinton, I think rightly, concluded that the United

States, relieved, I suppose, over the freeze at Yongbyon, had moved

on to other crises, like Bosnia, Haiti, and so forth. Not so, the

North Koreans. And he judged that the United States had no overall strategy toward North Korea, toward dealing with this funny

place. He asked Secretary of Defense—former Secretary of Defense

Bill Perry to conduct an overall policy review and come up with an

overall strategy, and Bill Perry asked me to be his senior advisor.

We looked—we did exactly what you all would do—we looked at

all of the logical alternatives. One alternative was to undermine

the North Korean regime and try to hasten its collapse. And we

looked at that very carefully. We could not find evidence of significant internal dissent in this rigid Stalinist state—however, certainly nothing like Iraq, let alone Afghanistan—that could provide

a U.S. lever for an undermining strategy.

And then there was the problem of mismatched timetables. Undermining seemed a long-term prospect, at best; whereas, our

weapons of mass destruction difficulties were near-term.

Finally, our allies would not support such a strategy. Since an

undermining strategy is precisely what North Korea’s leaders fear

most, suggesting it is U.S. strategy without a program to accomplish it seemed to us doubly counterproductive.

Another possibility we looked at was to advise the President to

base his strategy on the prospect of reform in North Korea. Maybe

Kim Jong Il would do in his country what Deng Xiaoping did in

China, open the country up and encourage a more normal positioning in the international community for North Korea. One can

certainly hope that, but hope’s not a strategy. We needed a strategy. We needed a strategy for the near term. So we set that aside,

as well.

Summing up the first two options, our report, which is available

in unclassified form, stated, and I quote, ‘‘U.S. policy must deal

with the North Korean Government as it is, not as we might wish

it to be.’’

Another possibility was buying our objectives with economic assistance, and our report said that we could not offer, I quote again,

‘‘North Korea tangible rewards for appropriate security behavior.

Doing so would both transgress principles the United States’ values

and open us up to further blackmail.’’

In the end, we recommended that the United States, South

Korea, and Japan all proceed to talk to North Korea, but with a

coordinated message and negotiating strategy. After many trips to

Seoul, Tokyo, and even Beijing to coordinate our approaches, in

May 1999, Bill Perry and I and an interagency group, went to

Pyongyang and presented North Korea with two alternatives.

These are the two paths that Secretary Armitage, who was working

outside of government along the same lines at the same time, referred to earlier.

On the upward path, North Korea would verifiably eliminate its

nuclear missile programs. And, in return, the United States would

take political steps to relieve its security concerns, the most important of which was to affirm that we had no hostile intent toward

42

North Korea. We would also help to dismantle its weapons facilities. Working with us and through their own negotiations, South

Korea and Japan would expand their contacts and economic links.

On the downward path, the three allies would resort to all means

of pressure, including those that risked war to achieve our objectives. We concluded the policy review in the summer of 2000, and

I stepped down from my advisory role.

Over the next 2 years, North Korea took some small and reversible steps on the upward path. Whether it would have taken further steps on this path is history that will never be written.

And, finally, Mr. Chairman, and in closing, that brings us to today’s crisis. News reports late last week indicated that not only is

the freeze no longer on at Yongbyon, but North Korea might be

trucking away the fuel rods where they can be neither inspected

nor entombed by an air strike. This is the disaster we faced in

1994. But as this loose-nukes disaster unfolds and the options for

dealing with it narrow, the world does nothing.

This is especially ironic as the world prepares to disarm Iraq of

chemical and biological weapons by force, if necessary. What is

going on at Yongbyon as we speak is a huge foreign policy defeat

for the United States and a setback for decades of U.S. nonproliferation policy. Worse, 17 months after 9/11, it opens up a

prospect of nuclear terrorism.

There are no fewer than five reasons why allowing North Korea

to go nuclear with serial production of weapons is an unacceptable

threat to U.S. security. First, as has been mentioned, North Korea

might sell plutonium. Second, in a collapse scenario, loose nukes

could fall into the hands of warlords or factions or whomever is

around. Now, the half-life of plutonium 239 is 24,400 years. What’s

the half-life of the North Korean regime? Third, even if the bombs

remain firmly in the hands of the North Korean Government,

they’re a huge problem. Having nukes might embolden North

Korea into thinking it can scare away South Korea’s defenders— us—weakening deterrence and making war on the Korean Peninsula more likely. Thus a nuclear North Korea makes war more

likely. Fourth, a nuclear North Korea could cause a domino effect—

this was said also earlier—in East Asia as South Korea, Japan,

and Taiwan ask themselves if their non-nuclear status is safe for

them. That’s not a question we want them asking themselves or

really that they want to ask—or they wish to have to ask themselves, but they might have to. And fifth and finally, if North

Korea, one of the poorest and most isolated countries in the world,

is allowed to go nuclear, serious damage could be done to the global

nonproliferation regime. So that’s five reasons, any one of which is

riveting.

What should we do at this juncture? Let me sum up with some

suggestions—some factors that the administration might keep in

mind as it attempts, as we tried to do in 1999, to formulate an

overall strategy to head off this disaster.

The first is, of course, that we have to make clear to North Korea

that the concealment or a reprocessing of these fuel rods poses an

unacceptable risk to U.S. security.

The second thing we should bear in mind is that no American

strategy toward the Korean Peninsula can succeed if it’s not shared

43

by our allies, South Korea and Japan. Their national interests and

ours are not identical, but our interests do overlap strongly. And

they can provide vital tools to assist our strategy, and they can also

undercut and undermine our strategy if they’re not persuaded to

share it.

Third, the unfreezing of Yongbyon is the most serious, urgent

problem. In comparison to what they might have done back in 1989

as the starter kit, this moves them to a new plateau of serial production and a real arsenal. In comparison to the uranium program,

which is a dribbling out of material in the years ahead, this is a

big bang of immediate possession of a substantial cache of nuclear

weapons. So the freezing of Yongbyon is the most serious problem.

Fourth, President Bush has indicated that he intends to seek a

diplomatic solution to this crisis. It’s possible that North Korea can

be persuaded to curb its nuclear ambitions, but we have to understand it might be determined to press forward.

So whatever we do on the diplomatic front I think we have to

view as an experiment. And in any diplomatic discussion, the

United States must ultimately—our goal must be to obtain the

complete and verifiable elimination of North Korea’s nuclear program.

Now, there’s much debate over what the United States should be

prepared to give in return and an aversion, which I share, to giving

North Korea tangible rewards that its regime can use for its own

ends. But it does seem to me that there are two things that the

United States should easily be prepared to do.

First, I indicated earlier that there’s little reason to have confidence that North Korea will collapse or reform or transform soon,

and little prospect that the United States can accomplish either result in a timescale required to head off loose nukes in North Korea.

That being the case, a U.S. decision not to undermine the regime

could be used as a negotiating lever. Much as we object to its conduct, we can tell the North that we do not plan to go to war to

change it. Only the U.S. can make this pledge, which is why direct

talks are required. We can live in peace, but that peace will not be

possible if North Korea pursues nuclear weapons. Far from guaranteeing security, building such weapons will force a confrontation—

that’s what we need to argue to them.

We can also argue that since North Korea has enough conventional firepower to make war a distinctly unpleasant prospect to us,

as I noted earlier, it doesn’t need weapons of mass destruction to

safeguard its security. This ‘‘relative stability’’—and I believe that

was a phrase the Secretary used earlier—in turn, if restored, this

relative stability on the Korean Peninsula, can provide the time

and conditions for a relaxation of tension and eventually improved

relations if North Korea transforms its relations with the rest of

the world.

The second thing we should be able to offer is some assistance,

with dismantlement, because at some point, Yongbyon has to be

dismantled, as must the centrifuges for enriching uranium, the ballistic missiles and their factories, and the engineering infrastructure that supports them. The United States can surely suggest to

North Korea that we participate in this process, both to hasten it

and to make sure it takes place. This assistance would be similar

44

to the Nunn-Lugar Program’s historic efforts to prevent loose nukes

after the cold war.

Mr. Chairman and members, let me close with one final thought.

Once nuclear materials are made, either plutonium or enriched

uranium, they are exceedingly difficult to find and eliminate. These

are not visible or highly radioactive materials. They last for thousands of years. In the case of uranium, 715 million years is the

half-life. There is no secret about how to fashion them into bombs.

They can fall into the hands of unstable nations or terrorists for

whom cold war deterrence is a dubious shield, indeed.

These facts describe America’s and the world’s dominant security

problem for the foreseeable future. It’s of the utmost importance to

prevent the production of nuclear materials in the first place.

Therefore, the main strategy for dealing with the threat of nuclear

war—weapons must be preventive. And our most successful prevention program, such as Nunn-Lugar, have been done in cooperation with other nations, and maybe there’s that possibility with

North Korea. But, in exceptional cases, and maybe that’s the case

with North Korea, it may be necessary to resort to the threat of

military force to prevent nuclear threats from emerging.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Carter follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF HON. ASHTON B. CARTER, CO-DIRECTOR, PREVENTIVE DEFENSE PROJECT, JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY

THREE CRISES WITH NORTH KOREA

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee on Foreign Relations, thank you

for inviting me to appear before this Committee to share my recollections about two

previous crises with North Korea, and my suggestions regarding the current crisis.

1994

I am not an expert on North Korea. I am fond of saying that there are no real

experts on this strange place, only specialists, and they don’t seem to have much

expertise. I became acquainted with Korean affairs in seat-of-the-pants fashion

when I was serving as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy in 1994, when the first of the recent crises over North Korea sprang up.

That spring North Korea was planning to take fuel rods out of its research reactor

at Yongbyon and extract the six or so bombs’ worth of weapons-grade plutonium

they contained. The United States was trying to deal diplomatically with this

threat, but in the Pentagon we were also exploring military options. Secretary of

Defense William J. Perry ordered the preparation of a plan to eliminate Yongbyon

with an airstrike of conventional precision weapons. We were very confident that

such a strike would eliminate the reactor and entomb the plutonium, and would also

eliminate the other facilities at Yongbyon that were part of North Korea’s plutonium

infrastructure. In particular, we were confident that we could destroy a nuclear reactor of this kind while it was operating without causing any Chernobyl-type radioactive plume to be emitted downwind—obviously an important consideration. Such

a strike would effectively set back North Korea’s nuclear ambitions many years.

While surgical in and of itself, however, such a strike would hardly be surgical

in its overall effect. The result of such an attack might well have been the

unleashing of the antiquated but large North Korean army over the Demilitarized

Zone, and a barrage of artillery and missile fire into Seoul. The United States, with

its South Korean and Japanese allies, would quickly destroy North Korea’s military

and regime—of that we were also quite confident. But the war would take place in

the crowded suburbs of Seoul, with an attendant intensity of violence and loss of

life—American, South and North Korean, combatant and non-combatant—not seen

in U.S. conflicts since the last Korean War.

Fortunately, that war was averted by the negotiation of the Agreed Framework.

The Agreed Framework was and remains controversial, so it is important to know

what it did and did not do. It froze operations at Yongbyon for eight years, verified

45

through onsite inspection, until just a few weeks ago. The six bombs’ worth of plutonium was not extracted from the fuel rods, and no new plutonium was created during that period. Had the freeze not been operating, North Korea could now have

about fifty bombs’ worth of plutonium. It is worth noting that under the NPT, North

Korea is allowed to extract all the plutonium it wants provided it accounts for the

amount to the IAEA. I felt strongly in 1994 that the United States could not accept

an outcome of negotiations with North Korea that only got them back into the NPT,

still letting them have what would be in effect an inspected bomb program. Our able

negotiator’s instructions in fact were to tell the North Koreans they had to close

Yongbyon. If they asked, ‘‘Why can’t we just abide by the NPT and make plutonium,

inspected by the IAEA, like the Japanese do?’’ the U.S. replied, ‘‘Because you pose

a special threat to international security.’’ So the Agreed Framework went well beyond the NPT.

The Agreed Framework did not eliminate Yongbyon, but only froze it. In later

phases of the agreement, Yongbyon was to be dismantled. But we never got to those

phases. Nor could, or should, the Agreed Framework be said to have ‘‘eliminated

North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.’’ For one thing, while the freeze was perfectly verified, there was no regular verification that elsewhere in North Korea there

was not a Los Alamos-like laboratory designing nuclear weapons, or a hidden uranium enrichment facility—which North Korea has in fact recently admitted to having. In addition, way back in 1989 North Korea extracted plutonium from some fuel

rods. The amount is unknown but could have been as much as one or two bombs’

worth. No one outside of North Korea knows where that plutonium is. No technical

expert doubts that North Korea could make a bomb or maybe two out of it—a ‘‘starter kit’’ towards a nuclear arsenal. Again, later phases of the Agreed Framework

called for North Koreans to cough up this material, but these phases were never

reached. Finally, the Agreed Framework did not stop the development, deployment,

or sale of North Korea’s medley of ballistic missiles.

So from a threat perspective, the Agreed Framework produced a profoundly important result for U.S. security over a period of eight years—the freeze that is disastrously thawing as we speak. But it was an incomplete result, as events four years

later would show.

1998

In August 1998, North Korea launched a ballistic missile over Japan and into the

Pacific Ocean. The launch produced anxiety in Japan and the United States and

calls for a halt to the implementation of the Agreed Framework, principally the oil

shipments that were supposed to replace the energy output of the frozen reactor at

Yongbyon (in actual fact the Yongbyon reactor was an experimental model and was

not used to produce power). If we stopped shipping oil, the North Koreans would

unfreeze Yongbyon, and we would be back to the summer of 1994.

President Clinton recognized that the United States, relieved over the freeze at

Yongbyon, had moved on to other crises like Bosnia and Haiti. Not so the North

Koreans. The President judged, correctly in my view, that the United States had

no overall strategy towards the North Korean problem beyond the Agreed Framework itself. He asked former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry to conduct a policy review, and Perry asked me to be his Senior Advisor.

We examined several options.

One was to undermine the North Korean regime and hasten its collapse. However, we could not find evidence of significant internal dissent in this rigid Stalinist

system—certainly nothing like in Iraq, let alone Afghanistan—that could provide a

U.S. lever. Then there was the problem of mismatched timetables: undermining

seemed a long-term prospect at best, whereas the nuclear and missile problems

were near-term. Finally, our allies would not support such a strategy, and obviously

it could only worsen North Korea’s near-term behavior, prompting provocations and

even war. Since an undermining strategy is precisely what North Korea’s leaders

fear most, suggesting it is a U.S. strategy without any program to accomplish it is

doubly counterproductive.

Another possibility was to advise the President to base his strategy on the prospect of reform in North Korea. Perhaps Kim Jong Il would take the path of China’s

Deng Xiaoping, opening up his country and trying to assume a normal place in

international life. But hope is not a policy. We needed a strategy for the near term.

46

1 ‘‘Review of United States Policy Toward North Korea: Findings and Recommendations,’’ Office of the North Korea Policy Coordinator, United States Department of State, October 12,

1999. [also available at: http://bcsia.ksg.harvard.edu/publication.cfm?program=CORE&

ctypebook&item—id]

Summing up the first two options, our report—which is available in unclassified

form 1—stated, ‘‘U.S. policy must deal with the North Korean government as it is,

not as we might wish it to be.’’

Another possibility was buying our objectives with economic assistance. Our report said the United States would not offer North Korea ‘‘tangible ‘rewards’ for appropriate security behavior; doing so would both transgress principles the United

States values and open us up to further blackmail.’’

In the end, we recommended that the United States, South Korea, and Japan all

proceed to talk to North Korea, but with a coordinated message and negotiating

strategy.

The verifiable elimination of the nuclear and missile programs was the paramount

objective. Our decision not to undermine the regime could be used as a negotiating

lever: much as we objected to its conduct, we could tell the North that we did not

plan to go to war to change it. We could live in peace. But that peace would not

be possible if North Korea pursued nuclear weapons. Far from guaranteeing security, building such weapons would force a confrontation.

We could also argue that since North Korea had enough conventional firepower

to make war a distinctly unpleasant prospect to us, it didn’t need weapons of mass

destruction to safeguard its security. This relative stability, in turn, could provide

the time and conditions for a relaxation of tension and, eventually, improved relations if North Korea transformed its relations with the rest of the world.

After many trips to Seoul, Tokyo and also Beijing to coordinate our approaches,

in May 1999 we went to Pyongyang. We presented North Korea with two alternatives.

On the upward path, North Korea would verifiably eliminate its nuclear and missile programs. In return, the United States would take political steps to relieve its

security concerns—the most important of which was to affirm that we had no hostile

intent toward North Korea. We would also help it dismantle its weapons facilities.

Working with us and through their own negotiations, South Korea and Japan would

expand their contacts and economic links.

On the downward path, the three allies would resort to all means of pressure, including those that risked war, to achieve our objectives.

We concluded the policy, review in the summer of 2000, and I stepped down from

my advisory role. Over the next two years, North Korea took some small steps on

the upward path. It agreed to a moratorium on tests of long-range missiles. It continued the freeze at Yongbyon. It embarked on talks with South Korea that led to

the 2000 summit meeting of the leaders of North and South.

The North also began the process of healing its strained relations with Japan,

making the astonishing admission that it had kidnapped Japanese citizens in the

1970’s and 80’s. And it allowed United States inspectors to visit a mountain that

we suspected was a site of further nuclear-weapons work, a precursor of the intrusive inspections needed for confident verification. Whether North Korea would have

taken further steps on this path is history that will never be written.

Today

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, that brings us to today’s crisis.

News reports late last week indicated that not only is the freeze no longer on at

Yongbyon, but North Korea is trucking the fuel rods away where they can neither

be inspected nor entombed by an airstrike. This is the disaster we faced in 1994.

But as this loose nukes disaster unfolds and the options for dealing with it narrow,

the world does nothing. This is especially ironic as the world prepares to disarm

Iraq of chemical and biological weapons, by force if necessary. What is going on at

Yongbyon as we speak is a huge foreign policy defeat for the United States and a

setback for decades of U.S. nonproliferation policy. Worse, seventeen months after

9/11 it opens up a new prospect for nuclear terrorism. There are no fewer than five

reasons why allowing North Korea to go nuclear with serial production of weapons

is an unacceptable threat to U.S. security.

First, North Korea might sell plutonium it judges excess to its own needs to other

states or terrorist groups. North Korea has few cash-generating exports other than

ballistic missiles. Now it could add fissile material or assembled bombs to its shopping catalogue. Loose nukes are a riveting prospect: While hijacked airlines and anthrax-dusted letters are a dangerous threat to civilized society, it would change the

47

way Americans were forced to live if it became an ever-present possibility that a

city could, disappear in a mushroom cloud at any moment.

Second, in a collapse scenario loose nukes could fall into the hands of warlords

or factions. The half-life of plutonium-239 is 24,400 years. What is the half-life of

the North Korean regime?

Third, even if the bombs remain firmly in hands of the North Korean government

they are a huge problem: having nukes might embolden North Korea into thinking

it can scare away South Korea’s defenders, weakening deterrence. Thus a nuclear

North Korea makes war on the Korean peninsula more likely.

Fourth, a nuclear North Korea could cause a domino effect in East Asia, as South

Korea, Japan, and Taiwan ask themselves if their non-nuclear status is safe for

them.

Fifth and finally, if North Korea, one of the world’s poorest and most isolated

countries, is allowed to go nuclear, serious damage will be done to the global nonproliferation regime, which is not perfect but which has made a contribution to

keeping all but a handful of nations from going nuclear.

Therefore, the United States cannot allow North Korea to move to serial production of nuclear weapons. As the U.S. attempts to formulate a strategy to head off

this disaster, I would suggest that we keep four factors in mind:

1. No American strategy toward the Korean peninsula can succeed if it is not

shared by our allies, South Korea and Japan. Their national interests and ours

are not identical, but they overlap strongly. They can provide vital tools to assist our strategy, or they can undermine our position if they are not persuaded

to share it. Above all, we must stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them to deter

North Korean aggression.

2. The unfreezing of Yongbyon is the most serious urgent problem. North

Korea also reprocesed fuel rods at Yongbyon way back in 1989. In that period,

it obtained a quantity of plutonium that it did not declare honestly to the IAEA,

as it was required to do. How much is uncertain, but estimates range as high

as two bombs’ worth. Whether North Korea has had a bomb or two for the past

fifteen years is not known. But for sure it is today only a few months away from

obtaining six bombs. The North Koreans might reckon that’s enough to sell

some and have some left over to threaten the United States and its allies. North

Korea also admitted last October that it aims to produce the other metal from

which nuclear weapons can be made—uranium. It will be years, however, before

that effort produces anything like the amount of fissile material now being

trucked from Yongbyon.

3. President Bush has indicated that he intends to seek a diplomatic solution

to this crisis. It is possible that North Korea can be persuaded to curb its nuclear ambitions, but it might be determined to press forward. Therefore we need

to view diplomacy as an experiment.

4. In any diplomatic discussion, the United States must ultimately obtain the

complete and verifiable elimination of North Korea’s nuclear program. There is

much debate over what the United States should be prepared to give in return,

and an aversion, which I share, to giving North Korea tangible rewards, that

its regime can use for its own ends. But it would seem to me that there are

two things the United States should be prepared to do.

First, I earlier indicated that there is little reason to have confidence that

North Korea will collapse or transform soon, and little prospect that the U.S.

can accomplish either result in the timescale required to head off loose nukes

in North Korea. That being the case, a U.S. decision not to undermine the regime could be used as a negotiating lever: much as we object to its conduct, we

can tell the North that we do not plan to go to war to change it. We can live

in peace. But that peace will not be possible if North Korea pursues nuclear

weapons. Far from guaranteeing security, building such weapons will force a

confrontation. As noted above, we can also argue that since North Korea has

enough conventional firepower to make war a distinctly unpleasant prospect to

us, it doesn’t need weapons of mass destruction to safeguard its security. This

relative stability, in turn, can provide the time and conditions for a relaxation

of tension and, eventually, improved relations if North Korea transforms its relations with the rest of the world.

Second, at some point Yongbyon must be dismantled, as must the centrifuges

for enriching uranium, the ballistic missiles and their factories, and the engineering infrastructure that supports them. The U.S. can surely suggest to North

Korea that we participate in this process, both to hasten it and to make sure

it takes place. This assistance would be similar to the Nunn-Lugar program’s

historic efforts to prevent loose nukes after the Cold War.

48

Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, the terrorist attacks of September

11 make clear that if nuclear weapons are controlled by a country enmeshed in social and political turmoil, they might end up commandeered, bought or stolen by terrorists. Who knows what might happen to North Korea’s nuclear weapons as that

state struggles to achieve a transformation, possibly violent, to a more normal and

prosperous nation.

Once nuclear weapons materials are made—either plutonium or enriched uranium—they are exceedingly difficult to find and eliminate. They last for thousands

of years. There is no secret about how to fashion them into bombs. They can fall

into the hands of unstable nations or terrorists for whom Cold War deterrence is

a dubious shield indeed. These facts describe America’s—and the world’s—dominant

security problem for the foreseeable future. It is of the utmost importance to prevent, the production of nuclear materials in the first place. Therefore the main

strategy for dealing with the threat of nuclear weapons must be preventive. Our

most successful prevention programs (such as the Nunn-Lugar program) have been

done in cooperation with other nations, but in exceptional cases it may be necessary

to resort to the threat of military force to prevent nuclear threats from maturing.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Dr. Carter, for that very

important testimony.

I understand that the witnesses have conferred and that Ambassador Gregg should proceed at this point. And so I recognize you,

Ambassador. We’re delighted that you are here with us.

STATEMENT OF HON. DONALD P. GREGG, PRESIDENT AND

CHAIRMAN OF THE KOREA SOCIETY, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA, FORMER SECURITY

ADVISOR TO VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH, NEW YORK,

NY

Ambassador GREGG. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have submitted testimony, which I assume will be in the

record.

The CHAIRMAN. It will be placed in the record in full.

Ambassador GREGG. I listened with great interest to the questions directed at Secretary Armitage, and I very much agree with

you, Senator Biden, that he’s a terrific witness.

I wanted to address a question that Senator Chafee asked. He’s

no longer here, but he said, ‘‘What went wrong after 1994?’’ And

I may have a somewhat unusual perspective on that since I went

to North Korea twice last year, spent about 20 hours talking with

both military and political leaders, and I have some sense of what’s

on their minds.

First of all, I would say that I think, although Kim Jong Il is in

control, he has to work at that, and he works at it by his militaryfirst policy. I think his hope to eventually develop North Korea into

a more normal state is very much under suspicion on the part of

his military and the hardline Communist/Marxist leaders.

The North Koreans were full of questions in April, when I first

went. ‘‘Why is George Bush so different from his father? Why does

George Bush dislike Bill Clinton so much? Why does this administration use such harsh rhetoric in describing us?’’ Senator BIDEN. Are you going to tell us the answers?

I’m curious what you said.

Ambassador GREGG. Well, I had one rule in the talks, and that

was that I would not criticize my President any more than I would

expect them to criticize their chairman.

So my answer to the first question was, George W. Bush is a

Texan, and his father was a New Englander. And my answer to the

49

second question is that, George Bush doesn’t like Bill Clinton because Bill Clinton defeated his father in 1992, and how would Kim

Jong Il feel about somebody who had done something similar to

that to his father?

Why is the rhetoric so harsh? We’re at war. We are very angry.

We have seen horrible things happen in our cities. And that was

really the reason that I wrote a letter to the chairman and said,

‘‘It’s imperative that our two countries talk.’’

My take on what I heard from them is that, from their signing

of the 1994 Agreed Framework, they had hoped that this would be

the start of a new era, but that with the election results of 1994,

where there was a change in the leadership in at least—I’ve forgotten, was it both in the House and the Senate or both?

Senator BIDEN. I haven’t forgotten.

The CHAIRMAN. Substantial.

Senator BIDEN. Substantial change.

Ambassador GREGG. There was a great deal of skepticism voiced

about the Agreed Framework by the newly ascendant Republican

leadership and some of the ancillary agreements designed to improve the overall relationship between North and South—North

Korea and the United States were not—were not followed up.

The terrific work that Dr. Carter and Secretary Powell did in

1998 headed off a second crisis, and things progressed very rapidly

when North Korea sent Vice Marshal Jo Myong Rok to Washington. He was invited to the White House. He went there in uniform, which was quite a sight. He invited President Clinton to visit

North Korea, and President Clinton sent Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to check that out.

She came back, invited about 30 Korean specialists to dinner,

and said, ‘‘What do you think? Should President Clinton go?’’ Two

of the members there said, ‘‘No, under no circumstances.’’ About

three said, ‘‘Yes, you should, under any circumstance.’’ The rest of

us were spread out in the misty flats saying, ‘‘Only go if certain

things are settled.’’

Well, President Clinton almost went. And I was approached by

his senior North Korean policy advisor in December 2000, who

asked my advice on that. And I said, ‘‘Well, I won’t give advice, but

I’ll certainly listen to where you are.’’

I said, ‘‘Do you have a missile deal?’’ And she said, ‘‘Almost.’’ She

said, ‘‘There were two or three very key questions that we are trying to get out of the North Koreans in Kuala Lumpur, but we can’t

get them to answer. We think they know the answer, but they

won’t answer.’’

I said, ‘‘I think what Kim Jong Il is doing is holding those in reserve to give as presents to President Clinton if he goes.’’ And the

question, then, ‘‘Does the American President go hat in hand to

North Korea with the hope and expectation that he will get a missile deal?’’ And I said, ‘‘That’s his choice.’’ And in the end, he decided that he would not go.

I think that the North Koreans had every expectation, because

their overt behavior had not changed in any way, that there would

be more continuity between Clinton and the incoming Bush administration than there was. Kim Dae-Jung came to Washington, I

50

think in March 2001, had a very bad meeting, was told that a policy review was going to be undertaken.

That was completed in June. The agenda from the policy review

had changed. It was a much more difficult one for the North Koreans to come to grips with. Then came 9/11, which changed the

world. And then came the State of the Union speech with the ‘‘axis

of evil’’ rhetoric.

After that, Jim Kelly prepared a bold approach. That was delayed by the sea skirmish between North and South Korea in the

western Yellow Sea in June. And then we learned of the secret

North Korean uranium enrichment program with the Pakistanis.

And there were those in the administration who insisted that that

be the No. 1 issue on Kelly’s agenda when he went to North Korea.

So here were the North Koreans, who had hoped for the start of

a dialog, and all they got was confrontation.

I’d like to say a word about the Pakistani connection. They have

had a long and intimate association with the Pakistanis. They have

dealt with Pakistani nuclear scientists and technicians, and I

think, from those men, they have gathered the sense of security

which Pakistan thinks it has accrued to itself by acquiring nuclear

weapons. And I think that that has had a seductive impact on certain aspects of the North Korean regime.

And so here we are. The hardest thing for me to explain is why

they cheated on the Agreed Framework. And the best answer I can

come up with is that they have not heard much support for the

Agreed Framework from the administration. Some of its ancillary

stipulations were not implemented. And the body language from

this administration was very tough.

I think they correctly assessed President Bush as a very effective, tough wartime leader. I think they expect the war with Iraq,

if it comes, to be short. And I think that they have a heavy expectation that they are next. And I think that that accounts for their

drive toward nuclear weapons.

Can it be stopped? Don Oberdorfer, who accompanied me on my

second trip, in November, is doubtful that it can be. I am more optimistic, because on two occasions I have seen last-minute interventions—the first by Jimmy Carter in 1994, which turned around a

very dangerous situation; and the second, the intervention by Ash

Carter and Bill Perry.

I think the North Koreans want a security guarantee from the

United States. They know that only we can give it, and that is why

they are insisting on talks with us. And I was very relieved to hear

that Secretary Armitage says these talks will take place.

A word on South Korea. The South Koreans are, sort of, in shock

at looking at who have they elected for President. And as Armitage

said, it was a generational shift. Younger South Koreans have forgotten that they are suppose to be eternally grateful to us for 1950

and are more interested in their relations with North Korea than

they are in maintaining relations with the United States which

they feel have gone stale.

Why do they feel that? I think they feel that, because although

we have absolutely legitimate global concerns about proliferation,

we have not been accurate in calibrating how those concerns impact in a regional context. And the South Koreans have heard

51

much more about U.S. policy toward Asia from proliferation specialists, who know a great deal about proliferation, but know zero

about Asia. They have seen far less of Mr. Kelly than they should

have, and far more of other officials, who I think have not advanced our regional concerns.

So I still am somewhat optimistic. I think the meeting between

President Bush and the newly elected President Roh is a very important one. I think the South Koreans very much want to have

our troops remain. I think they very much want to have us perceived as being in favor of reconciliation on the Korean Peninsula,

and they have lost their clarity on that issue. So I think if we are

somehow able to reassure them that we are interested in reconciliation, that we are not set on regime change in the north, they will

be very much reassured.

It’s very difficult to sit here making any kind of a case for Kim

Jong Il. Those of you who saw 60 Minutes two nights ago or saw

the Newsweek cover 2 weeks ago, called Dr. Evil, I sort of, feel almost like a Quisling in saying we ought to deal with this guy. And

yet I think that is our best option, and that, I think, is the unanimous view of North Korea’s neighbors, and I think we ought to

take that very seriously.

Thank you very much, Senator.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Gregg follows:]

PREPARED STATEMENT OF AMB. DONALD P. GREGG, PRESIDENT AND CHAIRMAN OF

THE KOREA SOCIETY, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA,

FORMER SECURITY ADVISOR TO VICE PRESIDENT GEORGE BUSH

There is a ‘‘perfect storm’’ brewing near the Korean Peninsula—it is not a typhoon

but a political-military upheaval that is threatening to turn a 50-year-old relationship with South Korea on its head, and to bring about a radical change in the balance of military power in the region through North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear

weapons.

In South Korea, where a presidential election was held in late December 2002,

the candidacy of Roh Moo Hyun was supported decisively by younger voters who

clearly showed that their top priority was the improvement of relations with North

Korea, not the maintenance of longstanding ties to the U.S., which over the past

several years have seemed to grow stale. The over-fifty set who preponderantly

voted for Lee Hoi Chang are deeply upset by his defeat in this pivotal election, but

the broad outlines of the policies enunciated by the president-elect are unlikely to

be reversed.

I have never met president-elect Roh, but from what I hear he has a natural instinct for politics that makes him acutely sensitive to the changing dynamic on the

Korean Peninsula. He is already positioning himself to be taken seriously when he

makes his first trip to the United States following his inauguration later this

month, and I feel confident that the Bush administration understands the importance of this visit and will treat him with all due courtesy. At the same time, there

is no gainsaying the fact that there are significant underlying differences in perspective and strategy related to North Korea policy between the Bush administration

and the incoming Roh administration. These differences will not be easily bridged

without a concerted effort by both sides to accommodate each other’s views.

The challenge posed by North Korea is both very complex and highly dangerous.

North Korea has always been a very difficult intelligence target, and our knowledge

and understanding of the actions and motivations of its leaders are seriously deficient. What we do know is that they are deeply committed to their own world view

and strongly resistant to the countervailing world views of outsiders—including

those of their most immediate neighbors in the region. They also are notoriously

tough negotiators who seem almost to relish taking a dangerous issue right to the

brink.

I visited North Korea twice in 2002. My first visit took place in early April after

I had written directly to Chairman Kim Jong Il, saying that in the wake of 9/11

the U.S. government’s heightened concerns about North Korea’s weapons of mass

52

destruction needed to be discussed frankly to avoid the eruption of dangerous misunderstandings between Pyongyang and Washington. During that visit I had about

ten hours of discussions with a vice minister of foreign affairs and a very tough

three star general posted along the DMZ. In the course of those discussions, I

formed a distinct impression that the general’s world view was notably different

from that of the vice minister, which raises at least the possibility of something less

than a monolithic point of view among the leadership of North Korea.

The North Koreans were full of questions, mostly about President Bush. Why is

he so different from his father? Why does he hate President Clinton? Why does he

use such insulting rhetoric to describe our country and our leaders?

The general, in particular, was very cynical about the U.S. He showed little trust

in dialogue, and was harsh in his criticism of our implementation of the 1994

Agreed Framework. Still, at the end of our meeting he thanked me for coming such

a long way, and said our talks had been, in part, beneficial.

The vice minister bemoaned the lack of high-level talks with the U.S., such as

had been held at the end of the Clinton administration. He expressed regret that

President Clinton had not visited Pyongyang, asserting that a visit at that level

would have solved many difficult issues. He said to me: ‘‘You and I cannot solve the

problems between our countries. Talks have to be held at a much higher level.’’ Upon my return to Washington, I strongly recommended that a high-level envoy

carrying a presidential letter be sent to Pyongyang to get a dialogue started. A Korean-speaking foreign service officer had accompanied me, and was most helpful in

assuring that information from our visit was disseminated within the governmemt.

Later, on October 3, I received a written invitation to return to Pyongyang. The

invitation also indicated that the North Koreans had accepted my suggestion, made

in April, that the USS Pueblo be returned as a good will gesture to the American

people. The Pueblo was seized by the North Koreans in 1968, and had been converted into a sort of anti-American museum, moored along the bank of the Taedong

River in Pyongyang.

From mid to late October, the U.S. government released information on Assistant

Secretary of State Kelly’s visit to Pyongyang that had taken place in early October.

The visit had not gone well from the North Korean point of view as Kelly had confronted them about the development of a secret highly enriched uranium program

using equipment acquired from Pakistan. I thought that this might mean that my

visit would be cancelled, but it held firm and I went into Pyongyang in early November accompanied by the historian Don Oberdorfer, and Fred Carriere, vice president

of The Korea Society, who is proficient in Korean.

Our opening meetings were with the same two officials. Both men were deeply

chagrined that the Kelly visit had been little more than a confrontation, but seemed

upbeat about the improvements in their relations with South Korea and Russia. The

general spoke effusively about ‘‘cutting down fifty year old trees’’ in the DMZ to facilitate a restoration of North-South rail connections, and said he was developing

amicable relations with his South Korean counterparts. The vice minister told me

that the return of the Pueblo was ‘‘off the table.’’ I went down to the river to see

it. It had been moved. An old man who was exercising on the bank at the spot

where the Pueblo had been moored told us that it had been moved to Nampo for

‘‘repairs.’’

In all of our conversations, we made the point that the highly enriched uranium

program was a violation of several agreements North Korea had signed with both

South Korea and the U.S. When we asked the general ‘‘when and why’’ the program

had been started, he blandly responded: ‘‘I am not required to answer that kind of

question.’’

In our meetings with the vice minister, we stressed the need for North Korea to

stop its HEU program, which was of great concern to the U.S. and to all of North

Korea’s neighbors. We were told that ‘‘all of the U.S.’s nuclear concerns will be

cleared if the U.S. agrees to sign a nonaggression pact, shows respect for our sovereignty and promises not to hinder our economic development.’’

Toward the end of our visit we also met with First Deputy Foreign Minister Kang

Sok Ju, who is probably Kim Jong Il’s closest foreign policy advisor. Minister Kang

said that Chairman Kim had referred positively to President Bush’s statement in

South Korea that the U.S. has no intention of attacking North Korea, and urged

that the United States respond boldly to North Korea’s requests as stipulated in our

previous discussion with the vice minister.

Don Oberdorfer and I reported directly to the White House upon our arrival in

the U.S. a few days later, after a brief stopover in Seoul. We urged that a positive

dialogue with North Korea be started. In response, we were told only that initiating

a dialogue would serve only to ‘‘reward bad behavior’’ on the part of the North Koreans. On November 15, the U.S. and its KEDO allies announced a cut-off of future

53

oil shipments to North Korea. North Korea was quick to respond by evicting IAEA

inspectors, shutting off surveillance cameras, announcing its withdrawal from the

NPT and making a number of other moves suggesting that they may have decided

to develop a nuclear weapons capacity—most notably, the recent indications of a

possible movement of spent fuel rods from the containment pond at Yongbyon.

Why has this happened? I believe it is because the North Koreans take seriously

the harsh rhetoric applied to them by many prominent Americans, including leading

members of the Republican Party since the congressional elections of 1994 and the

Bush administration since 2000. From their long association with Pakistani nuclear

scientists and technicians, the North Koreans have most probably observed the

sense of security that Pakistan derives from its nuclear weapons. In addition, the

North Koreans appear to perceive President Bush as a tough and effective war leader, and probably assume that the Iraq war will be short, leaving North Korea next

in line for military action.

Can this North Korean lunge for nuclear weapons be stopped? Some experts think

it is too late. I am not quite so pessimistic. Less than ninety days ago, the North

Koreans wanted to talk. Today we are in the bizarre position of saying ‘‘we’re not

going to attack you, but we won’t negotiate with you.’’ This gives North Korea no

incentive to do anything but proceed to build a nuclear weapons capacity.

The ‘‘perfect storm’’ I mentioned at the beginning of this testimony may destroy

the balance of power in Northeast Asia, or it may escalate rapidly to a point of real

danger as it did in 1994. I still believe that it may be turned aside by the establishment of meaningful dialogue with North Korea. We’ll never know what might have

been avoided, unless we talk. In my view, it would be a miscalculation of unprecedented proportions if we failed to pursue the only viable option to change the course

of a morally repugnant regime, and avoid a catastrophe on the Korean Peninsula,

solely out of an understandable but ultimately shortsighted refusal to ‘‘reward had

behavior.’’

The CHAIRMAN. Well, thank you very much, Ambassador Gregg,

and I express, I am sure, the feeling of all the members of my committee to you and your colleagues at the table that you have been

important friends of the South Koreans and, likewise, important

interlocutors with the North. And we appreciate the wisdom from

those experiences you’ve just told so well.

Ambassador Bosworth.

STATEMENT OF HON. STEPHEN W. BOSWORTH, DEAN OF THE

FLETCHER SCHOOL OF LAW AND DIPLOMACY, TUFTS UNIVERSITY, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE REPUBLIC OF

KOREA, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE KOREAN PENINSULA

ENERGY DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATION, MEDFORD, MA

Ambassador BOSWORTH. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

First of all, it is a pleasure to be here with the committee. I look

forward to having the opportunity, perhaps, to respond to some of

your questions.

I just, for the purpose of the record, I would note that, in addition to my service in Korea as Ambassador, I was also the first executive director of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, the body that was charged, for better or for worse, with

building light-water reactors in North Korea, and I served in that

position from 1995 to 1997, during which time I had extensive contacts with North Korean negotiators and learned how difficult they

can be, which tempers any remarks I might make here this morning.

This is an extraordinarily difficult problem. It has bedeviled successive American administrations. And I think it would be unfair

for anyone to sit here before this committee and say, ‘‘Well, there

is a simple solution to this,’’ an easily identifiable formula through

54

which can deal with this extraordinary complex of very tough and

dangerous issues.

I am going to make just a few brief points about North Korea,

what might be its motivation, and then comment briefly on South

Korea and the U.S./South Korean relationship.

First of all, I think the best way to think about North Korea and

what it is doing is to bear very much in mind that every act it

takes has a connection to its desire to survive as a regime. It has

no friends. It, in its view, has no meaningful connection with countries around it, nothing that it is not willing to sacrifice, and it has

no shame, nor any guilt. Its only objective is regime survival.

Now, that means, on the one hand, that it is extraordinarily desirous of economic assistance to take account of the fact that its

economy is not just collapsing; its economy has collapsed. Industrial production is 20 to 30 percent of what it was 10 years ago.

Energy output has fallen by a similar measure. We know they cannot feed their population. This is a country whose economy has collapsed.

However, at the same time, I think we should not underestimate

the extent to which a desire for a peculiar form of international respect also motivates North Korea. And there is, difficult as it may

be for us to understand or, certainly, to explain, a sense in North

Korea that they want to be respected. They want to be taken seriously by the outside world. And I suspect that, to some extent, the

nuclear program is designed to ensure that they are taken seriously in one measure or another.

I do not know what North Korea’s goal is with regard to its nuclear program. I have been of the view for some time, even when

the Agreed Framework was still in place, before we knew, certainly, about the enriched uranium program—many of us had suspected that North Korea had retained some vestige of a nuclearrelated program, if only as part of a hedging strategy. And when

the HEU program was first unveiled, that was my assumption,

that it was—we had found their hedge.

They have subsequently, of course, taken this step-by-step process of breaking out of the Agreed Framework, and they are now reactivating their plutonium program, which, as Dr. Carter has

pointed out, is a much more threatening activity, because it is

much more imminent.

But I do not know whether they really want to become a nuclear

power. Do they see that now as the key to their regime’s survival?

Or is it possible that they still consider this nuclear program, the

Yongbyon program, as they did in 1994, something that they are

willing to bargain away? The only way we will know that is to talk

to them and test it.

In dealing with North Korea, as has been said here, it is absolutely essential that we do so in lockstep with the Republic of

Korea. We must have a common strategy, and we must have an

agreed allocation of responsibility in terms of how we deal with

North Korea in the negotiating, both through a mix of carrots and

sticks. Many of the carrots can only come from South Korea. And,

at the same time, many of the sticks must come from South Korea

in the form of withdrawn carrots, if you will.

55

South Korea now has established a position of some economic leverage over the North. And unless South Korea is willing to put

that out on the table, our effectiveness in dealing with the North

Korean regime is going to be very limited, indeed.

Now, what is the problem with South Korea? I think, basically,

the problem with South Korea is, first, generational. Yes, it is true,

as Ambassador Gregg has said and others have said today, that

those South Koreans under the age of 50 have no acute memory

of—firsthand memory of the Korean war, and their sense of gratitude to the United States has perhaps eroded a bit.

Moreover, I think there is no question that a large number of

South Koreans perceive that this administration has been employing what they term politely a hard-line policy toward North Korean. And that bothers them, because they see that as being diametrically opposed to the efforts of their own government, the ones

still serving and the one they have just elected, to pursue a policy

of reconciliation toward North Korea.

So they have come to view—some, and some have told me this

explicitly—come to view the United States no longer as just part

of the solution, but as, indeed, part of the problem. And I think

that is a matter that requires urgent consultation to resolve.

There is also, I think, an asymmetry in terms of South Korea’s

assessment of the threat and the risks of dealing with that threat,

as compared with our assessment of the relationship between the

threat and the risks of dealing with it.

For us, the threat of North Korea as a nuclear power is a global

concern. It has to do with other states. It has to do with non-state

actors. It is, in some ways, the only perceptible threat to American

national security—not just from North Korea, but weapons of mass

destruction in the hands of people who would threaten their use— is really the only, last threat to American national security. So we

are willing to pay a very high price to ensure that that threat does

not grow. Indeed, the discussion of coercive diplomacy that some

have engaged in is simply a euphemism for saying, ‘‘Yeah, we’re

willing to use military force if absolutely necessary.’’

For South Korea, the threat it not a global threat, and many

South Koreans do not perceive that their security would be severely worsened by North Korea’s development of nuclear weapons.

Yet they accurately perceive that an effort to deal with that threat

that went beyond diplomacy would impose a very heavy burden on

them. So they accept or incur what, from their point of view, is an

unacceptable level of risk in trying to combat a threat, which they

see also as a threat, but they do not see it in the same way that

we do. And we see the risk as involving essentially the Korean Peninsula and northeast Asia.

So I think that it is essential that the administration, that this

government, reinforce its efforts to try to come to grips with and

tackle the differences between ourselves and the Republic of Korea.

I am convinced that the new administration in South Korea very

much wants a stable, good relationship with the United States. I

think they are eager to begin a process of close consultation with

the objective of doing in 2003 what we did in 1998 in the exercise

that Bill Perry led, and that is come to a common assessment of

the facts, come to an agreement on what a desirable strategy would

56

be for dealing with those facts, and then allocate responsibilities

between the two of us and with other countries in the region.

But in order for that to happen, the United States, I believe, has

to move very quickly to engage directly with North Korea. Yes, it

is very desirable to have a multilateral framework within which

those bilateral contacts take place, but there is no substitute in the

current constellation of forces in northeast Asia, nor, indeed, in the

one that is likely to be present in the future, for direct, active leadership by the United States.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much, Ambassador Bosworth.

Let me commence my line of questioning by indicating that we

welcome the special envoy of the incoming President of South

Korea, who is here visiting with Secretary Powell this morning,

even as we speak. It will be my privilege to see him this afternoon,

and I look forward to that opportunity. He will be seeing other Senators, I am certain.

And in those conversations, I hope that we will be able to convey

to the incoming President, as well to the outgoing President, that

we are good listeners, we are partners, and we are strong allies,

but, likewise, try to discover, as all three of you tried to illuminate,

what has gone wrong in the relationship, because it is extremely

important that relationship be made stronger and very, very

promptly, in terms of the interests of our two countries as well as

others who are counting upon us, the South Korean responsibility

being that which you have talked about, and ours, likewise.

I think the chairman and I and others today have tried to emphasize our feeling that direct talks between North Korea and the

United States are important and urgent. And Secretary Armitage

pointed out that we have been waiting for the new administration

to come in, to get its feel of the situation, and so forth. But as Secretary Carter pointed out, while that wait proceeds, so may the nuclear proliferation threat which he has described so accurately and

which he has been describing for the last decade, really, with very

specific detail. That may get beyond the point of control by either

South Korea, the United States, or our friends who are involved.

So there is a special urgency here.

My question, I suppose, to the three of you is, if you were visiting, and you may, with the special envoy, how are we able to

make the point to the South Korean administrations, present and

future, that the urgency of hearing about trucks going along the

road, about the potential lifting of rods, the building of weapons

even as we think about this, why is that that important?

As you have pointed out, Ambassador Bosworth, the South Koreans could calculate that a North Korea with nuclear weapons is

certainly not a good thing, but, on the other hand, all things considered, that our feelings, the United States’ feelings, about our security, weapons of mass destruction, the intersection with terrorists, is our situation, and they may sympathize with that, but they

are not really clear that is all that big of a deal as far as they are

concerned.

I do not depreciate that, but I would suggest that we have two

different timetables going on here, I think. Those of us who are

genuinely worried, and I hope all of us are, about weapons of mass

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destruction, or materials that bring about those weapons falling in

to the hands of terrorists of other regimes, of trades and transactions, that this is our national security, this is the ball game.

Now, that is proceeding, even day by day, and yet it seems to me,

in terms of our diplomatic strategy, the timetable is much less precise, and, as a matter of fact, does not exist at all, except stability

for the new regime in South Korea. We hope somehow the Chinese

come to a different point of view, the Russians might be more helpful, ditto for the Japanese, everybody, with the North Koreans, it

seems to me, precisely rebuffing each of these entrees, indicating,

‘‘We’re not interested in you. We’re interested in the United

States.’’ That is the talk we want to have.

How do we get this together with the South Koreans quickly, because for us to proceed in these direct talks, as all of us are advising, we run the dangers still of perhaps not having the sensitivity

we need toward the South Korean viewpoint, which may be distinctly different, or falling through the transition of the administrations, or various other things. And, as you pointed out, Ambassador

Bosworth, from your own experience with these negotiators from

North Korea, it is very discouraging.

It is all well and good for us to talk about having talks. I have

not had nearly so many with difficult people in the world as the

three of you have had, but we have talked to a lot of very difficult

people, dangerous people, people that are not good people, people

that are evil. And we have talked to all these people because we

thought, conceivably, something good for the United States and the

world might come from that.

Can you offer some more enlightenment, any of the three of you,

in response to this plea, really, for assistance?

Dr. CARTER. I would just—two observations. It is an excellent

question, and it is a particularly timely one, because, as I think everyone here has been emphasizing, we cannot succeed with our objectives unless we are together with the South—— The CHAIRMAN. With South Korea.

Dr. CARTER [continuing]. Koreans. And the same thing is true of

them. So what is the basis? Our interests do not coincide. They

overlap, but they do not coincide.

I would make two arguments to the South Koreans in that regard. The first one is that the pursuit of nuclear weapons by North

Korea does make war on the Korean Peninsula more likely. It is

not just a matter that they can fall into the hands of terrorists or

get out and, thereby, come back at the United States, but not at

South Korea. That is true, too, but it is also true that South Korea

has enjoyed, prospered, grown its economy, democratized against a

background of stable deterrence on the Korean Peninsula. Pursuit

of weapons of mass destruction by North Korea can disrupt that

stability which they have enjoyed for decades by convincing North

Korea that it has something more than its conventional army, that

it can change the equation in some way. So that does threaten

South Korea’s security.

But the other part of the answer, I think, has to be to them—

and this is something that we always try to remember in talking

to the South Koreans and the Japanese—when we go to the table

with the North Koreans, we cannot just go to the North Koreans

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with what we want. We have to go to the table with what the Japanese and the South Koreans want, also; and, likewise, they, when

they go to the table with the North Koreans, need to go with what

we want.

So when we talked to the North Koreans, we always mentioned

the abductee issue. That was not an American issue; it was an allied issue. And if we want the Japanese to back us and want what

we want, we have to want what they want to some extent. There

has to be a common portfolio of desires and then a common portfolio, as Ambassador Bosworth said, of carrots and sticks put forward.

So they need to back us a little bit where our interests overlap

but do not coincide, and we need to do the same for them.

The CHAIRMAN. Ambassador Bosworth.

Ambassador BOSWORTH. Very briefly. I think that, in terms of

South Korea, we need basically two things. One, we need a process

which does not appear to the South Korean public that the United

States is dictating to its new government.

This is a newly assertive South Korea, and the electorate will insist, as they demonstrated during the election itself, that its government stand up to the United States. Now, it is sad to say that

we are at that point, but they have a deep suspicion that the

United States is going to try to dictate a policy to their new government which responds to American goals and objectives and interests and does not respond to theirs. So we need a process which

avoids that. And I think, personally, until we have gone a lot further in discussing these issues with the new government in South

Korea, it might be just as well not to try to be precipitate about

a meeting between the two chiefs of state.

The other thing is that we need a U.S. policy. What is it we are

trying to convince South Korea to do? I mean, as someone who follows this all very carefully, if I had to go back over the last 2 years

and say, ‘‘This is what we’ve been attempting to do,’’ it would be

very difficult for me. So I think that we have to have a policy that

we can ask the South Koreans to coordinate with us on.

The CHAIRMAN. Do you have a further thought, Mr. Gregg.

Ambassador GREGG. Just a couple. I had breakfast yesterday

morning with the chairman of one of South Korea’s leading corporations. They make microchips, a multi-billion-dollar success.

They have some very basic concerns. One, they are worried that—

the new President, when he comes—will not be received with the

proper courtesy. I assured them that he would be. Second, they are

worried that our President is focused on regime change rather than

working with North Korea as it is, as repulsive as it is. And this

may be the voice of old Asia, to paraphrase Secretary Rumsfeld’s

statement but they were saying that if you want to remove a leader

in Asia, if you want to remove the mandate of heaven from him,

that has to be done by his own people. And so they said, ‘‘Help us

to open up the windows in North Korea. And then if he still has

the mandate of heaven, we can work with him.’’

And then, finally, they said Roh Moo Hyun is a lawyer and that

everything that the President says to him must stress logic and

evidence.

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The CHAIRMAN. Well, I thank you, all three of you, for this advice. I gleaned that you would say to the South Korean emissary,

first of all, that we believe that these talks between our two countries are tremendously important. They need to be constant. We

really have to go into a crash course of learning where we are now.

But as Secretary Carter has pointed out, make the point to the

South Koreans that nuclear weapons in North Korea probably

caused them a cause for alarm, in terms of their own stability they

may or may not have perceived—fully perceive this. But at least

I think that is an important point, that we are going to talk, if we

have these talks, for all three of us, the Japanese abductees issue

and others that may come into the thing. But then to recognize

that we have some work to do with our own policy, as Ambassador

Bosworth has pointed out.

We have to determine what we want. Now, I think what we want

is a termination of the weapons of mass destruction program, really

a cleanup of the whole lot, international inspections so that we are

convinced.

It seems to me that that is clearly what we want, but that is—

may be just a personal preference. I think it is such an extraordinary point, though, with regard to our overall war against terrorism, the overall security of the United States, as we have talked

about, that this may very well be a point that others could agree

upon.

And, finally, I appreciate the point that Secretary Carter has

made. Whether it is called a Nunn-Lugar program or not, there

may come a time in which the cleanup is expensive. If you were

to go about rendering safe all of this, the resources are probably

not there in North Korea to do it any more than they are in the

former Soviet Union. And we still have trouble making that point

annually with regard to chemical weapons or other situations that

we are working through. But it is probably important to start, because if, in fact, there is to be safety for the North Koreans, the

South Koreans, for us, for everybody else, that probably is going to

require a very concerted effort on our part, including technicians,

finances, and a multi-year training to get the job done.

Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. The Senator has a time constraint so I will yield

to Senator Dodd.

The CHAIRMAN. OK. Senator Dodd.

Senator DODD. Well, thanks, Senator Biden. Thanks to my colleague, Joe, very, very much.

And I said at the outset of my remarks awhile ago, in front of

Secretary Armitage, how important these hearings were. And let

me say again Mr. Chairman, how much I appreciate it.

This has been an incredibly informative hour or so listening to

these three gentlemen, who I have known and dealt with, to some

degree, over a number of years. I remember being in the Philippines, I think, with Ambassador Bosworth about the same time

you were, Mr. Chairman, going back to the mid-1980s and the catastrophic events and the tremendous job you did there. And, as well,

Ambassador Gregg, your work over the years and Secretary Carter,

as well.

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So I thank you immensely. This testimony has been tremendously worthwhile.

I am disappointed more of our colleagues are not here to hear

this. There are reasons. Today there is a delegation on its way to

Houston to participate in the memorial services. And so those

watching this may wonder why more members are not here to listen to what you had to say. That had something to do with it.

But I would hope that members will pay attention to this and to

listen very carefully to what you had to say. Your testimony has

been tremendously informative.

Let me pick up the point that Senator Lugar was making, again,

and that is, I think all of us, at least those of us here, I think agree

that we need to have this conversation pretty quickly, these talks

with North Korea, and that any delay in that is foolhardy.

But obviously, before that can happen, the point that Senator

Lugar was raising is, we have to decide what we want. And I get

the sense, once again, as I watched the debate going on within the

administration about Iraq, I have a sense that is occurring. I think

a debate within the administration is healthy. I am not suggesting

they should not be. But I am concerned and I want to ask you

about this.

In your mind, is this a significant debate that goes beyond just

what we want out of North Korea, but what we want, in a larger

sense, between the factions who advocate arms control or a NunnLugar approach, or those who advocate a missile defense approach?

I am concerned that what I am watching here is this debate that

almost—and I use these words very guardedly—but almost welcomes, to some extent, this renewed threat. It gives cause and justification for a whole new approach to dealing with the geopolitical

problem, and that is of a proliferation of weaponry and your response to it. And I am very worried that there are those who— when I begin to look over the last couple of years, I can accept the

fact that some poor choice of words is in a speech. Lord knows,

every one of us on this side of the table is engaged in that at one

time or another. I can accept the fact that you want to have a review of a policy decision. I can accept a litany of these things. But

after awhile, you begin to wonder if there is not a pattern here that

goes beyond just, sort of, a series of accidents and begins to look

like something more planned and well thought out in terms of

what you are ultimately trying to achieve.

And I am worried, in a sense here, that those who advocate an

approach that would commit us to a massive missile defense system are prevailing in this debate, and, hence, the reluctance to

have these kind of talks and to deal more forthrightly with this

problem.

And so what do we want? What does the administration want?

Are my suspicions about this debate accurate, in your view? Do you

think that there is a larger debate going on here beyond North

Korea that is holding up a decision on how to deal with this? Or

is that an exaggerated view of mine? And if it is, I want you to tell

me so.

Ambassador BOSWORTH. Well, Senator, for myself, I would only

say that having served in various administrations of both parties,

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side, because I think they are very much like a marriage, and unless you are on the inside, you really do not know. And even when

you are on the inside, you may not know everything that is going

on.

My sense is that, at one point, perhaps, the arguments you make

or the observation you make may have been actually quite correct.

But I think when this goes beyond just a missile problem and becomes a problem of, as Ash Carter says, ‘‘loose nukes’’ in northeast

Asia that that should, sort of, take care of the argument about

whether or not we use this as justification for national missile defense.

It seems to me that there is a deeper sort of question here, and

that is the—how does this country, as powerful as we are, how do

we deal with bad things in the world and bad people? And I think

there is—as objectively as I can state this, there is a tendency, on

some issues, to approach them from a perspective of what one

might describe as moral absolutism rather than from the perspective of how you can manage the problem. And that brings you to

things like regime change as an ultimate goal.

I have no willingness or desire to see the regime of Kim Jong Il

continue any longer in North Korea, but I am concerned about how

you bring that about, and I think that is the question that has to

be constantly reexamined.

Senator DODD. Secretary Carter.

Dr. CARTER. Ambassador Bosworth just touched on the point—

a precise point I was going to make. In dealing with North Korea,

there is kind of a threshold question, given the behavior of the government with respect to its own people. And I remember the famine days of 1996 to 1998, and that was truly upsetting, I think, to

any human being who has children and sees children in the condition that North Korean children were in because of the inability of

their own government to give them what they need.

And we are talking about dealing, as I quoted from the Policy

Review report, with the government as it is, not as we wish it was,

and you really—I think that is a threshold for us all. I got over

that threshold by considering whether we had any realistic prospect of changing it, and also by considering the damage that it

could do for the period when it lasts.

I think logic, human nature, all tell you that this cannot go on

forever, what you see in North Korea, but I cannot produce for you

the kind of evidence that you would require that you can base your

strategy on the prospect that they will collapse before they cause

lasting damage to our security. And what that means is, you have

to swallow hard and go deal.

And I do not have any insight, particularly, into the administration, but I read the Bob Woodward book and so forth, and I think

that is a threshold question for any President, and it is perfectly

understandable that it is a threshold question. It is one you have

to reason your way through.

Ambassador GREGG. I think a coincidence contributed to what

you speak of, Senator, and that was the issue of the Rumsfeld report on anti-—or missile threats to the United States in 1998, and

then, I think, within 60 days, the firing of the North Korean Taepo

Dong missile, which they claim was something designed to launch

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a satellite that would have played music praising Kim Jong Il. But

whatever the case, it took us aback, because it was more sophisticated and more long range than we thought possible.

And so North Korea became the poster child for missile defense,

and I think that when the Bush administration came into office,

that that was certainly a mindset that applied very strongly in certain parts of the administration to North Korea.

I think the President—I have been very interested to see how

he—how consistent his statements have been on North Korea since

the Kelly visit. He has never wavered from saying we are going to

find a peaceful solution to this through dialog.

And I welcome that. I think he is realizing that some of these

ideological wish lists run afoul of reality in the world and that the

stakes are huge in northeast Asia. And so I think he is very much

now on the side of a diplomatic solution. It just has to be worked

out by the rest of the administration what shape that takes.

Senator DODD. Sooner the better. And let me say, by the way, I

am not—it is not a question. I think there is an argument that can

be made—in fact, a need—for us to develop a missile defense system. I am not suggesting that it is necessarily a choice between one

or the other, but it sometimes looks simplistic as I watch the pattern here and as time goes by and as that clock continues to tick

on this question. And it is—and the longer we wait in engaging

this in a diplomatically aggressive way, it seems to me, then the

greater the dangers are, as all of you have pointed out here, as

each day goes by.

And the notion—one of you made the point of having some real

specialists on Asia, some real experts on Asia, involved in this—is

going to be critically important, and I think there is a bit of a vacuum on that particular point, as well.

Mr. Chairman, I thank you immensely. And I thank Senator

Biden for his generosity.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you.

Senator Biden.

Senator BIDEN. Gentlemen, I think this is some of the best testimony I have heard in the long time I have sat here. You each sort

of—I do not know whether you got together, but you each asked

and spoke to and answered a different question that is on the

minds of all our colleagues.

Ash, you laid out how we got to where we are, in terms of what

actually was negotiated, was anticipated, the context in which it

was done, the decision process, which basically came down to what

you just said a moment ago—if there was a way to change the regime, it was not going to be more catastrophic for the short-term,

and our friends around the region short-term and maybe long-term,

then that was an option that would warrant being considered. But

the conclusion was that that was not the best option, and you chose

another option, which I wholeheartedly agree with.

And I should note, for those who may be listening, we are not

talking to, you know, a uniform group of three specialists and experts who all come from the same political perspective here.

Ambassador Gregg, I do not want to in any way damage your

credibility, but I thought your explanation and exposition on what

you think went wrong was brilliant, absolutely brilliant. I mean,

63

who knows for certain, but I was talking to Senator Hagel—I think

it is the single most succinct and accurate and most probable explanation of us never being able to read someone else’s mind as to how

a series of a chain of events and circumstances brought us to this

point, without in any way making apologies for the regime in the

North and being pretty hard-baked about it.

And Ambassador Bosworth, you being in another administration,

and Ambassador Gregg, if I am not mistaken, not that you speak

for any Bush, but you had a fairly close relationship with the first

Bush, you are a very well-known Republican.

So I just want the audience to know, who may be listening, that

this is not somehow a panel that we put together, or you put together, Mr. Chairman, that was decided to come at it from one political perspective. And I thought your explanation about essentially what went wrong in the South, Mr. Ambassador, Ambassador

Bosworth, was equally as cogent.

But it leads me to a couple of questions and a few generic observations. One is that I do believe that, early on, the biggest issue

that this administration occupied itself with in terms of foreign policy, slash, strategic policy, slash, defense policy its first year, was—

and I, in turn, occupied myself with it—was the issue of national

missile defense, its nature, how broad it would be, how necessary

it was.

And to put it in raw political terms, if there had been a fundamental transformation, if there had been a revolution in the North

and the present regime was overthrown and a democratic republic

was put in place, there would have been no rationale for national

missile defense based on what was being suggested at the moment,

in terms of its urgency. So we should all not kid ourselves that

whether or not that moved the administration to be empathetic or

sympathetic to a crisis occurring, I am not suggesting that, but

without North Korea, there is a pretty lame—pretty lame—rationale of the urgency for and the pitifully small but incredibly expensive national missile defense program that has come forward from

the administration.

And then, on top of that, I do not think we—I mean, I have been

here for—well, I have been here as long as you guys. I have been

a United States Senator for 31 years. I have dealt with seven

Presidents. And I say ‘‘dealt with.’’ I have served here with seven

different Presidents, probably only dealt with four in a real sense.

And the fact of the matter is, I have never seen an administration

as fundamentally divided as this administration is on our place in

the world and how to deal with it. And we are kidding each other.

I know you all say, and you are all diplomats, and you are all

not going to go in and suggest that you know what is his thinking

and the administration, how—but this is a fundamental divide that

exists, not on Korea, but on the issue of the moral certitude and

what response we take to that. And there is a legitimate case.

And I think we all make a big mistake if we do not go back and

read the writings of the intellectual right on this notion in the foreign policy establishment for the last 10 years. There is a consistency. This is not something—I mean, we all make a mistake of not

reading, you know, the think-tank guys downtown. There is a genVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:38 May 07, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 85795 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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uine consistency to a very different road to be taken, a different

path suggested, and has been being suggested, since the late 1980s.

And we have an administration now that is divided as to whether or not that path is the one to take, which I will, at another time

and place, not here, characterize in detail by quoting and reading

the people who have been your counterparts on the other side of

this equation who have been making a very sound, from their perspective, and intellectually defensible argument. I think they are

wrong, but this is not something that is just a little bit of a difference on tactics within this administration.

The thing that has startled me is—‘‘startle’’ is the wrong word— has interested me is, it tends to be a combination of the civilian

military, the civilian defense, and the politicos in the White House

exempting the President, because I do not think he has made up

his mind—at least I pray to God he has not made up his mind

yet—and, interestingly enough, the uniformed military and the

State Department. I mean, I find this an unusual coalition in the

way that things have broken down in past Democrat as well as Republican administrations.

And so the reason I bother to suggest this is that I do not think

it is unreasonable for anyone—anyone—in any country who loves

us, hates us, fears us, has an incredibly warm feeling about us, to

not acknowledge that. They wonder whether or not we have set

upon a path of regime change, not just here, and not just in Iraq

or—how about Iran or North Korea? There is—we would be lying

to the American people—there are people in this administration— and they are good people; they are bright people, they are honorable people—they are acting out of what they think is the best interest of the United States of America. And there are our colleagues here who think regime change is the only answer.

So for us to sit down and assume that all North Koreans are stupid and they have not—they cannot detect that, is not to suggest

that that is the reason they have acted the way they have, not suggesting they would have acted better if it did not—if that were not

part of the division of the administration, but there are a lot of

things that aid and abet in the confusion.

My greatest worry, Ambassador Gregg, is that I do not think

that Kim Jong Il is as much of an imbecile as he is made out to

be, by any stretch of the imagination. Not by you, but, I mean, you

know, the caricature of him. But I do worry that he is isolated. I

do worry he will make the mistake that is often made, as we make

it as well, between U.S. policy and Asian policy, generically, of

misreading—misreading—miscalculating what the response of the

United States may be and/or the world may be to his actions. I do

not think he has a very keen antennae for that part of—that requirement of a leader. I am not sure he is accurately assessing

what may happen.

And the only conflict worse than one’s intent—one that is intended is one that is unintended. And I see this as a—I was thinking earlier, Mr. Chairman, of being a sophomore in college, as a

history major, listening to a professor talk about how when the

Russian army mobilized in World War II along the border, it never

intended that it was going to end up in a war, and that—and Germany responded, and how we got very rapidly to a point of no reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:38 May 07, 2003 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00068 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 85795 SFORELA1 PsN: SFORELA1
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turn very quickly that maybe history could have avoided, depending on the misreading of one another and our intentions. And that

is my greatest concern with regard to Kim Jong Il. That is my

greatest concern, misreading us here.

Now, none of us can divine—at least I cannot, and you have all

said you cannot, although you are more qualified to do it than we

are—what the final intention—if there has been a final judgment

made by Kim Jong Il now as to whether or not he has concluded

his security, if you will, his stability in power rests upon the acquisition of more nuclear weapons, or whether it is still not too late

to work something out. I do not know the answer to that question.

And I also do not know the answer to the question of how in

charge—is he in charge? One of you said you thought that he

was—he had to pay, he thought, significant—he is still working out

control—I think it was you, Mr. Ambassador—and that the military is part of that issue, and they are not particularly enamored

with the prospect that there may be a diplomatic way to maintain

their present position.

And so this prelude here leads me to a couple of questions. I had

the privilege of the President, without revealing it, confiding in me

asking me what I thought went wrong with his meeting with Kim

Dae-Jung. And I was interested, genuinely, as to the President’s

wondering why this went wrong, why things did not go very well

in that meeting.

Well, I think part of where we are now is that I think the administration, if not the President, was betting that President Roh was

likely to lose, and they would have a very different South Korea

to deal with, Mr. Ambassador, which is part of, I think, their being

perplexed now as to how to respond.

The one thing, Ash, you and Secretary Perry did so—I think the

single most underestimated contribution you made, beyond the fact

we don’t want 50, 60, or 100 more, depending on the calculations,

nuclear bombs or weapons out there, is that you made sure—I remember talking to you throughout this and to Wendy and to the

Secretary—you made sure that North Korea—I mean, excuse me—

South Korea, Japan, and us were on the same page. As my recollection was there was no daylight. None. No daylight.

And which leads me to why I am a little perplexed about one aspect of your testimony, and that is that although I think you think

that should be reestablished if you can, Secretary Bosworth points

out that South Korea, particularly in light of what they need to

be—and I just returned from South Korea, as well, with Senator

Sarbanes and Senator Specter. We met with the outgoing leadership. We went to the DMZ. We spent time there. We met with the

South Korean generals. And I got the same questions you got, Ambassador Gregg, in the North, I got those same questions in the

South. And I share your commitment. I have never abroad ever

criticized the President, and I will not do that. I think it is totally

inappropriate. And my answers were not as succinct and as insightful as yours were, and as diplomatic. So I did not give many

answers. I listened.

But we are in slightly different paths, Ambassador Bosworth, in

terms of what we view to be our—what is inimicable to our interest

and what is most inimicable to our interest. And it is clear that it

66

is going to be a little more difficult to put Humpty-Dumpty back

together here. He has not fallen off the wall completely, but, boy,

the cracks and fissures are visible of him sitting up on the wall

right now.

And so, Ash—I apologize, Mr. Secretary, for keep calling you

Ash—Mr. Secretary, I would like to—— Dr. CARTER. That’s fine.

Senator BIDEN [continuing]. To ask you, if, in fact, the course of

action which you broadly outlined and with some specificity as to

how you think we should proceed from here—if that fails, either in

its failure of not being initiated or fails in its execution—it is initiated and is not able to be executed—you talk about the need to

have a—essentially a red line here—my term, not yours.

In light of what Ambassador Bosworth said, I see no realistic

prospect in the near-term that we can credibly lay out a red line,

which is, ‘‘If you do not ultimately, North Korea, cease and desist,

with legitimate consideration being provided by the United

States’’—in a contract, you need consideration on both sides—‘‘if

you do not cease and desist, we keep the military option on the

table.’’ I think South Korea has moved so far that how in the devil

do you keep that incredible option unless you first and fundamentally repair the relationship with South Korea? That’s my first

question.

Dr. CARTER. If I can take a crack at that, it is an excellent question, and it is an issue of sequencing here. I think they go hand

in hand. In other words, we cannot repair our relationship with

South Korea until and unless—and I think Steve Bosworth made

this point—we show that we are on top of this issue. ‘‘On top of

this issue’’ means we have a strategy. We have arrived at that

strategy and are conducting that strategy in a process that includes

them in a respectful way as befits the people who actually live

there. And with that strategy, we can then go forward to the

North.

So these two things have to proceed in parallel. I do not think

we can repair our relationship with South Korea and say, ‘‘Let’s repair that first and then we’ll go North.’’ Part of the repair is to be

indicating that we have a strategy for the North that includes

them.

A final comment. I think red line is the right word. Red line is

the right word. I think North Korea needs to be made to understand, and we need to understand, ourselves, that going further

than the freeze, taking those fuel rods out and putting them where

we cannot get at them, doing irreparable harm to the status of the

freeze—— Senator BIDEN. By definition——

Dr. CARTER [continuing]. Is something the United States cannot

live with.

Senator BIDEN. Is, by definition, your definition of ‘‘going beyond’’—and that is to begin to reprocess?

Dr. CARTER. Absolutely.

Senator BIDEN. That is a red line.

Dr. CARTER. Yes.

Senator BIDEN. That is a fault line, right?

Dr. CARTER. Correct.

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Senator BIDEN. Now, I am going to ask you a question I understand you may not wish to answer, because it is—I am going to ask

it in a way that I think that most Americans would understand

it—presumptuous of me to say that, but—hypothetically, if the

President of the United States, in his State of the Union Message,

in which he was very somber and straightforward—if, in his State

of the Union Message, he said, ‘‘Notwithstanding the fact that I do

believe an ‘axis of evil’ exists, it is not my policy to change the regimes in those countries. It is my policy to be prepared to act if

those evil regimes take actions inimicable to our interests,’’ would

that have changed the mindset at all, or some version of that, if

the President were to enunciate and speak directly to it?

I just got back from Davos. Every world—I mean, literally—I did

not speak to every world leader who was there and every head of

state, but I spoke to one heck of a lot. You guys have been there.

And the phrase, as if it were equivalent to the Monroe Doctrine,

that everyone was familiar with, whether it was an African Foreign

Minister or the head of state from a European country or the Middle East or Asia, was they all knew the phrase ‘‘regime change.’’ They all believe, whether—they either—they moved from either

questioning, wondering, and/or being certain that this administration is driven by the notion that is borne out of an ideological purity, a moral certitude, that regime change is its obligation and

mission, that it will not do it willy nilly, it will not do it if the price

is too high, but that is the goal.

Now, how does that play? I mean, it is one thing—am I making

any sense here? Can you speak to that a little bit? How would it

change if we were able—if the President articulated that his policy

dealt with—it is like, you know, the old thing, ‘‘love the sinner, but

hate the sin’’—I mean, if it is shifted and if it is believed, what impact would that have?

Ambassador BOSWORTH. Well, I sometimes think, Senator, that

we spend too much time talking about what we will do ‘‘if.’’ And

I think we—in the case of North Korea, for example, I think in our

consultation with South Korea, we should publicly stress what we

are prepared to do on what I would describe as ‘‘the high road,’’ how we are prepared to try to put this thing back together.

We should probably talk quietly and privately with South Korea

about what we do if that does not work.

Senator BIDEN. Yes.

Ambassador BOSWORTH. But to the extent that we start talking

about it publicly, we undercut the effectiveness of what we are trying to do on the high road.

Senator BIDEN. I agree.

Ambassador BOSWORTH. So, you know, I think sometimes we

allow the rest of the world to participate, at least orally, in too

much of our internal discussions over our role and purpose in the

world, and it makes them very nervous.

We are a very powerful country, and, since September 11, we are

also a rather frightened country. And that combination really does

upset people, because they are not very certain about what we are

going to do under certain circumstances.

So I think, in dealing with South Korea first and then North

Korea, I think we ought to stress publicly what we are prepared

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to do, in a positive sense. To say explicitly that we are not prepared

to contemplate regime change, I would rather—having said already

what we have said in the past, I would like to get something for

that statement.

Senator BIDEN. Anyone else?

Ambassador GREGG. Your very interesting comments, Senator,

remind me of my early days in CIA when there was a decision to

undertake regime change by covert means, and then came Guatemala, Iran, and the disaster in Cuba. And it came to a stop. But

an awful lot was lost out of that process, and we are still alienated

from Iran. So I’m very much against it.

I think some of the hard-line people in the administration have

no clear awareness of the consequences of what they are suggesting. I think the President is coming to realize that, and I take

great hope from that.

Dr. CARTER. Just one comment. I have been concerned, since the

freeze began to thaw and we have been so preoccupied with other

things and have a difficult relationship with South Korea and are

still formulating our strategy, that North Korea would get the opposite of the message we should be sending. The message I fear

they get is, ‘‘We’re out to get you, but we’re not going to do anything about your nuclear weapons.’’

I would prefer just the opposite, which is, ‘‘We don’t have to be

out to get you, unless you’re after weapons of mass destruction. We

can ‘keep on keeping on’ with you, much as we dislike you’’——

Senator BIDEN. That is sort of what I meant when I—— Dr. CARTER [continuing]. ‘‘but we cannot if you are going after

weapons of mass destruction.’’ And that is where I think—our willingness to make that statement really is conditioned on their not

pursuing weapons of mass destruction.

So I would not, also, give it unless we got back from them the

assurances we need that they are not going forward with weapons

of mass destruction.

Senator BIDEN. One of the reason why I, like Senator Dodd, from

a slightly different perspective, am a little skeptical here about— and I agree with you, Ambassador Gregg, in my experience with

the President I think this is a work in progress. I think he is working his way through this. I think he is listening to both sides of

the argument being presented to him. And, so far—I get in trouble

with my colleagues for saying this on my side of the aisle—I think

his instincts have been pretty good. I think, at the end of the day,

he has made the right decisions, in my view. I think we waste a

lot of the good that could have come from those decisions by what

it takes to lead up to them, but, nonetheless, I think—so I have

some considerable faith, more than hope, that he will choose the

path that the three of you, and the chairman and I—I think we are

all basically on the same page—the generic path that we are talking about here.

But what I worry about is—and I hope it has changed—I think

he—I don’t—I don’t think, at least at the outset, that he, as former

Presidents who have also been Governors at the front end, fully appreciated that little nuances are read as messages to change entire

messages. When he said we were going to reconsider and we were

going to go back, we always add something else into the mix, like

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the three things you set out, Secretary Carter in what our objectives were, one of which was, you hope to get to missiles, you hope

to get to destruction of the facilities, et cetera, but you never insisted that also wrapped into this same agreement would be conventional. It was—and when the President threw in conventional,

I think a lot of people around the world thought, ‘‘Well, this means

he really does not want to proceed,’’ because there is very strong

criticism on the center right of the whole Agreed Framework to

begin with. I mean, it was an uphill battle, once the Congress

changed, as the Ambassador pointed out.

So I hope when he reaches this next point, I hope, again, we do

not get to the point where it inadvertently or advertently places the

conditions on discussions that doom it to failure from the outset because it causes us to question our motives, or, I think, our motives

to be questioned when the offer is made, just as I hope the Secretary of State, when he appears on Thursday, before the United

Nations and makes his case, my unsolicited advice is that he go

with what we have that is strong, and there is plenty there, and

not overplay our weak hand, which is terrorism, al-Qaeda, and nuclear weapons. That may all be part of it, but I hope the devil we

focus on what is unassailable, quite frankly. And I would hope we

do the same thing as we get to this next point.

But I will conclude by saying—asking you—and I think there is

agreement, but I do not want to misunderstand—do all of you believe that there is no way to accurately predict—there is no reason

to believe that in the near term there will be a collapse in the

North—that is that the leadership in North Korea will collapse,

will implode? I mean, is there any reason for any of you to think

that is a reasonable basis upon which the President should be making near-term planning?

Ambassador BOSWORTH. I agree with what some of my friends

here have said, that waiting for a collapse is not a policy. Now, at

the same time, I would also observe that this is a system that is

under tremendous stress, and I would be surprised, but not

shocked, to wake up any morning and find there had been a very

cataclysmic change in North Korea. I think that is always possible,

but it is not a policy.

Ambassador GREGG. I do not think there is much likelihood of a

collapse in the near term.

Dr. CARTER. I do not know what the likelihood is, but I agree

that you cannot base a strategy on it.

Senator BIDEN. And the last question I have is, would you all

elaborate slightly—I mean, for just a little bit, if you would, in the

interest of your time and the chairman’s—on what Ambassador

Gregg touched on—I think he is the only one that touched on it—

and that is, who is in charge? Give us your best assessment of the

degree to which you think, and how much latitude and flexibility,

Kim Jong Il has in order to—assuming we get to this point where

there are bilateral—under whatever umbrella—bilateral discussions with the North.

Ambassador BOSWORTH. My best analogy is perhaps the case of

Argentina during the Falklands war, when Secretary Haig was engaged in shuttle diplomacy between London and Buenos Aires. And

he observed that when he went to Buenos Aires, he had to consult

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with dozens of generals, even though it was a military dictatorship.

When he went to London, he had to consult with only one person,

and it was a democracy.

So I would suspect that Kim Jong Il has to, as Don Gregg said,

take account of the views of others. He cannot ride roughshod over

what the military sees as its interest or a senior cadre in the party

see as their interest. But I do not think he is, from all evidence—

and, again, I stress we are doing all of this on the basis of three

or four data points on a big screen—from all evidence, I see no conclusion that he is under any threat of being replaced or displaced.

Ambassador GREGG. The Chinese have told me that he took as

long as he did to assume full leadership in North Korea because

he took great care to make certain that he had real control over

the military. And his choice of Jo Myong Rok, to send to Washington in the fall of 2000, was an indication of that, as he reached

down into the ranks to pull up a man whom he trusted.

I think that the more we appear to threaten North Korea, the

more threatened the North Korean army and military acts and the

more claims they lay on Kim Jong Il. I think his ultimate hope is

to be able to have a special economic zone, like Kaesung, filled with

workers making widgets with which he can buy food for his starving people. For that to happen, he has to be able to disarm some

of his conventional military forces, and those guys do not want to

be disarmed if they think that, by disarming, that opens up an attack from us.

So that is how I see it, that he is in charge, but he has to cater

to the just absolutely imperative support of the military.

Dr. CARTER. A final thought. I agree with everything that has

been said. I am always struck, as I think about North Korea, with

the case of Albania. Albania was two generations into Stalinism

when it finally collapsed—the same kind of xenophobic absolute

control.

North Korea is now almost a generation beyond that. No Stalinist regime has lasted as long as North Korea. North Korean students—children have, if my information is right, 4 hours of political

education a day. Their parents had it, and their grandparents had

it. That is a phenomenon—that is a rigidity that I do not think humanity has experienced in a dictatorship before. And therefore, I

do not have any doubt—I understand what is being said here about

the need for any leader to enjoy the respect of those around him.

But, in that kind of system, if Kim Jong Il gives the order to go

this way, they will go that way, at least for a time. That means

that if he gives the order to go cross the DMZ, they will go across

the DMZ. It also means that if he gives the order to go in the direction of Deng Xiaoping or something else, they will go in that direction also, for a time, a critical time. So I do not know anybody on

the North Korean scene who does not think that he is absolutely

the audience for any message we send.

Senator BIDEN. Well, I thank you both. Thank you for the time—

all three of you—and, really, I cannot tell you how much this committee appreciates having you. I wish the three of you were running the policy.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, that is a high compliment.

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Senator BIDEN. I have probably damned you by that comment

but I really do. It’s first-rate.

The CHAIRMAN. Let me just conclude by—I am struck with the

two phrases that came up frequently, particularly in the last panel,

the ‘‘what went wrong’’ idea. This very room has been filled with

the joint intelligence committees in the last Congress trying to determine what went wrong on September 11, what went wrong in

terms of our perceptions, our policy, our preparedness, and our

ability, really, to understand the changes that ought to be made.

And that work continues with the special commission, with the intelligence committees having been discharged from that.

But it brought to the fore, in another way, the work of Bernard

Lewis, ‘‘What Went Wrong,’’ the book that he wrote, as to why we

do not understand Islam and what happened in Islam throughout

this period, why they have got real problems that they do not understand. These are really profound circumstances.

And I would just submit that even given all the arguments that

might occur in this current administration, one thing that went

wrong for a long time was that the American people lost interest

in foreign policy, and so did many of their leaders in this Congress.

For many years, people were interested and continue to be interested in healthcare and education for the American people, the ups

and downs of our economy and jobs issues, and any one of us who

is an elected politician needs to understand that. This is what people want to talk about.

Senator BIDEN. This used to be the hardest committee to get on,

too.

The CHAIRMAN. Well, occasionally, you may have 15 minutes at

the end of the public forum to talk about what is going on in the

rest of the world.

So it is not just a question that Afghanistan fell off the charts,

and—Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, never were there, but even with

countries as important as Korea and Japan and so forth. Many

Americans lost track of what is going on out there.

Now suddenly we have reaped some of that problem, not just

with our leadership, but with a constituency that the President

must appeal to, that all of us must appeal to, to understand why

this is important and why we are not in the phase of the Korean

war, the last Korean war, or some other situation.

Now, it is a catch-up, but this is the purpose of the hearing. It

is not simply for Senators, but it is for the American people who

are interested in this. And we appreciate your testimony, which

will have a wider audience, I think, as you appreciate.

The other thing that strikes me in the regime-change idea—I

came up, of all things, in a rather obscure piece of legislation—I

think it was obscure, because I do not remember much debate—but

in the Congress before President Bush got here, or his group, the

Congress said ‘‘Regime change is our policy.’’ Now, President Bush

latched onto that in a couple of public statements early on, while

all of the reviews are going on. And when asked, in a flip way,

maybe he would say ‘‘regime change, that’s what we’re about.’’

Well, not necessarily.

But the problem is one—I think the historical mention by Don

Gregg of his work in CIA and regime change of the past and why

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that became outmoded—is very, very helpful, and that is an introduction today that is important for us to take a look at, because

now it is obviously apparent in the North Korean situation, at least

as I listen to the President, that is not what he has on his mind.

But I thank the Senator for mentioning the fact that the President does appear to be open to ideas, and as I mentioned in response to Senator Dodd earlier, Senator Biden and I will have another chance to visit tomorrow morning at 7, albeit an early hour,

a fairly small group on a rather fateful day in American history,

as our Secretary of State testifies. And I mention, again, that the

Secretary will testify there on Wednesday. But, nevertheless, he

will be here on Thursday. That will be a rare privilege for the committee and, I think, the American people, once again, to hear him,

have a chance to question him, as we will.

Senator Chafee, does your reappearance signal a desire to question?

Senator CHAFEE. I want to apologize for having some conflicts,

but I happened to be back to hear the tail-end in the ninth inning.

The CHAIRMAN. Thank you very much. We thank the witnesses.

And the hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the committee adjourned, subject to

the call of the Chair.]

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